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UNIVERSITY  OF  ILLINOIS 
,  LIBRARY 


Class  Book 

\^>o 

PHILOSOPHY 


Volume 


_ 


wnowY 

Of 


The  'Dualism  of  Fact 
and  Idea  in  Its  Social 
Implications  ::  ::  :: 


Vy 

ERNEST  LYNN  TALBERT 


PHILOSOPHIC  STUDIES 

ISSUED  UNDER  'CUE  DIRECTION  OF  THE  DEPARTMENT  OF 
PHILOSOPHY  OF  THE  UNIVERSITY  OF  CHICAGO 

NUMBER  2 


CHICAGO 

THE  UNIVERSITY  OF  CHICAGO  PRESS 

1910 


i 

} 


The  Department  of  Philosophy  of  the  University  of  Chicago  issues 
a  series  of  monographs  in  philosophy,  including  ethics,  logic  and 
metaphysics,  aesthetics,  and  the  history  of  philosophy.  The  successive 
monographs  are  numbered  consecutively  with  a  view  to  their  subse¬ 
quent  publication  in  volumes.  These  studies  are  similar  to  the  series 
of  Contributions  to  Philosophy ,  but  do  not  contain  psychological  papers 
or  reprints  of  articles  previously  published. 


THE  DUALISM  OF  FACT  AND  IDEA 
IN  ITS  SOCIAL  IMPLICATIONS 


\ 


*. 


THE  DUALISM  OF  FACT  AND 
IDEA  IN  ITS  SOCIAL 
IMPLICATIONS 


ERNEST  LYNN  TALBERT 


1 


CHICAGO 

THE  UNIVERSITY  OF  CHICAGO  PRESS 
19  10 


\s»o 

T\ \ 


i 


Copyright  1910  By 
The  University  of  Chicago 


Published  February  1910 


\ 


v 


i 


Composed  and  Printed  By 
The  University  of  Chicago  Press 
Chicago,  Illinois,  U.  S.  A. 


* 


I 


II  CTITZ 


TABLE  OF  CONTENTS 


PAGE 


w 


Summary . . . 

I.  Characteristics  of  Functional  Logic . 

1.  A  Statement  of  a  Method  of  Dealing  with  New  Problematic 
Situations 

2.  The  Relative  Character  of  “Fact”  and  “Idea,”  Due  to 

A.  Dependence  upon  a  Specific  Emergency 

B.  Attainment  of  a  Definite  Purpose 

3.  The  Biological,  Practical,  and  Organic  Bearings  of  the  Work 
of  Thinking 

4.  The  Insistence  upon  the  Concrete  Universality,  Necessity,  and 
Hypothetical  Aspects  of  Judgment 

5.  The  Social  Nature  of  Impulse  and  Endeavor 

II.  General  Social  Implications  of  the  Dualism  of  Fact  and 
Idea . . 

1.  The  Professions  Emphasize  the  Idea;  the  Occupations  Empha¬ 
size  the  Fact 

a)  Conservatism 

b )  A  Standard 

c )  Consistency 

d)  Universality 
a)  The  Negative 

B.  The  Occupations  Stand  for  j  b )  The  Particular 

c)  The  Novel 

C.  Origin  of  the  Distinction  in  Primitive  Society 

a)  Psychological  Differences 

b)  Social  Grouping 

2.  The  Rationalist  in  Philosophy  Emphasizes  the  Idea;  the  Em¬ 
piricist  Emphasizes  the  Fact 

A.  Illustration  from  the  History  of  Ancient  and  Modern  Phi¬ 
losophy 

B.  Correlation  of  Professional  and  Occupational  Attitudes  with 
Rationalism  and  Empiricism 

C.  Danger  of  Undue  Stress  Laid  upon  Either  Standpoint 

5 

\ 


A.  The  Professions  Stand  for 


9 

11 


15 


o  37130 


J 


6 


TABLE  OF  CONTENTS 


PAGE 

III.  The  Systems  of  Hegel  and  Marx  as  Embodiments  of  the 

Social  Implications  of  Logical  Method  ....  20 

1.  Hegel 

A.  His  System  an  Elaboration  of  the  Idea 

B.  His  Absolute  Teleological  Dialectic 

C.  Its  Seeming  Remoteness  from  Human  Purposes 

D.  Its  Idealization  of  the  Existent  and  the  Profession 

2.  Marx 

A.  His  Use  of  the  Groundwork  of  Hegelian  Thought 

B.  His  Economic  Dialectic 

C.  Eulogy  of  the  Occupation 

D.  Employment  of  Empirical  Assumptions 

E.  The  Sources  and  Fallacy  of  His  Materialism 

3.  Criticism  of  the  Logical  Methods  of  Hegel  and  Marx 

A.  Fixation  of  Historical,  Shifting  Elements 

B.  Ignoring  of  the  Problem  at  Hand 

C.  Appeal  to  Means  External  to  the  Existing  Process 

IV.  Interaction  of  Fact  and  Idea  as  Illustrated  by  the  Changes 

in  Marxian  Doctrines . 28 

1.  Doctrine  of  Unlimited  Concentration  of  Industry 

2.  Doctrine  of  Increasing  Misery 

3.  Socialist  Doctrine  of  the  State 

V.  Transition  from  the  Hegelian-Marxian  Theory  to  Recent 

Opportunism . 37 

1.  The  Three  Stages 

A.  The  Absolute  Teleological 

B.  The  Scientific  and  Mechanical 

C.  The  Method  of  the  Working  Hypothesis 

2.  Evidences  of  Opportunism  in  the  Present  Views  of  the  Revision¬ 

ists 

3.  Modem  Sociology  as  an  Attempt  to  Synthesize  Fact  and  Idea 

VI.  Logical  Method  as  Employed  in  Recent  Solutions  of  Social 

Problems . 42 

1.  The  Trade  Agreement 


%  4 


TABLE  OF  CONTENTS  7 

PAGE 

A.  Situation  Creating  the  Problem 

B.  Results  Secured 

2.  The  Consumers’  Label 

A.  Conditions  Setting  the  Problem 

B.  Significance  of  Results  Achieved 

3.  The  Social  Settlement 

A.  Its  Interpretation  of  the  Profession  and  the  Occupation 

B.  Its  Contribution  to  the  Concept  of  Democracy 

C.  Its  Control  of  Social  Crises 

D.  Its  Logical  Value 

VII.  Conclusion — Logical  Method  and  Democracy  .  .  .  51 

The  Method  of  a  Progressive  Democracy,  Which  Must  Recognize 
the  Contributions  of  All  Its  Members,  Identified  with  the  Con¬ 
structive,  Hypothetical,  Logical  Procedure 


/ 


V 


t 


SUMMARY 

The  aim  of  this  thesis  is  as  follows: 

1 .  To  state  the  general  method  of  solving  a  definite  problem  as  defined  by 
that  type  of  logical  theory  for  which  thought  is  practical,  constructive,  and 
purposive. 

2.  To  suggest  philosophical  and  social  implications  of  the  dualism  of 
“fact”  and  “idea”  within  a  problem.  The  implications  are  that  emphasis 
of  the  “fact”  is  the  philosophical  attitude  of  empiricism,  and  the  social 
attitude  of  the  “occupation;”  the  emphasis  of  the  idea  is  the  philosophical 
attitude  of  rationalism,  the  social  attitude  of  the  “profession.” 

3.  To  show  how  the  features  of  logical  method  and  the  corollaries  of 
theoretical  and  practical  attitudes  serve  to  explain  and  to  criticize  the  stand¬ 
points  of  Hegel  and  Karl  Marx.  Hegel  is  regarded  as  a  rationalist,  an 
idealizer  of  the  “profession,”  and  the  established;  Karl  Marx  adopts  the 
general  rationalistic  framework,  but  uses  it  to  denounce  the  “profession” 
and  the  conventional,  and  to  support  the  supremacy  of  the  “occupation.” 
At  the  same  time  he  seeks  to  incorporate  the  empirical  into  his  system  and 
incurs  the  logical  difficulty  of  fixating  the  “fact.” 

4.  To  illustrate  the  failure  of  the  Marxian  logical  formulas  in  the  light 
of  succeeding  events. 

5.  To  describe  the  change  in  theory  and  practice  resulting  thereby. 

6.  To  indicate  the  possibilities  of  the  constructive  attitude  applied  to 
some  present  social  problems,  by  outlining  factors  in  the  situations  pro¬ 
ducing  them,  and  the  means  adopted  for  their  solution. 

7.  To  relate  the  constructive  logical  method  to  the  theory  of 
democracy. 


9 


I.  CHARACTERISTICS  OF  FUNCTIONAL  LOGIC 


That  thought  is  teleological,  reconstructive,  and  “  practical  ”  is  an  ancient 
doctrine;  but  reinforced  and  enriched  by  the  contributions  of  modern 
biology  and  psychology,  one  school  of  logicians  has  given  the  purposive 
element  of  thinking  a  fresh  significance.  Whatever  shortcomings  may 
exist  in  the  standpoint  of  the  “ experimental”  or  “instrumental”  type  of 
logical  theory  considered  from  the  angle  of  the  metaphysician’s  conception  of 
the  ultimate  nature  of  thought,  it  remains  true  that  a  suggestive  attempt 
has  been  made  to  explain  daily  processes  of  solving  concrete  difficulties  in  a 
manner  more  immediately  understandable  and  applicable  than  the  deduc¬ 
tive  subsump tive  method  of  the  formal  logic.  What  has  been  lost  of  sym¬ 
metry  and  certitude  has  been  compensated  for,  in  the  view  of  the  instru¬ 
mentalists,  by  the  illumination  coming  from  a  flexible  working  method  of 
interpreting  and  acting  upon  new  situations. 

A  noteworthy  feature  of  the  scanty  literature  of  the  functional  logic, 
so  called,  is  its  insistence  upon  the  relative,  shifting,  and  historical  character 
of  “fact”  and  “idea”  within  the  bounds  of  a  definite  emergency.1  It  is 
contended  that  any  real  crisis  calling  for  an  escape  from  contradiction  and 
uncertainty  is  due  to  a  failure  of  the  habitual  way  of  acting  or  thinking 
to  function  adequately  under  the  pressure  of  new  stimuli.  The  starting- 
point  of  a  logical  problem  is  always  an  “objective  situation”  within  which 
reflective  thought  works.  This  situation  can  be  explained  biologically 
as  structure  needing  adaptation  to  novel  demands;  psychologically,  as  an 
old  response  needing  mediation.  The  temporary  moving  equilibrium  is  dis¬ 
turbed  by  constant  shifting  of  interest  and  attention:  the  old  habit  fails, 
and  doubt,  uncertainty,  and  tension  ensue;  the  breaking-up  of  habitual 
response  is  signalized  by  the  emergence  of  a  more  or  less  intense  conscious¬ 
ness  of  the  strain.  The  best  words  to  characterize  consciousness  are  recon¬ 
structive  activity.  Within  the  reconstructive  process,  treated  logically, 
arises  a  bifurcation  into  “fact,”  the  given,  the  “data,”  and  “idea,”  the 
tentative  “meaning.”  The  initial  facts  are  not  immutable;  the  problem 
comes  to  consciousness  because  they  need  to  be  interpreted  and  acted  upon; 
there  is  a  projecting  of  possible  plans  of  action  and  a  selection  of  the  uni¬ 
versal  which  serves  as  most  adequate  control,  and  a  “testing,”  a  verifica- 

i  The  following  is  an  interpretation  of  the  opening  chapters  in  Studies  in  Logical 
Theory. 


12 


DUALISM  OF  FACT  AND  IDEA 


tion  in  application.  The  subject  of  the  judgment  denotes  stimulus,  the 
coming  to  focus  of  perceptual  elements  inconsistent  with  previous  habit; 
the  predicate  represents  the  appropriate  response.  The  judgment  is 
hypothetical  because  under  the  dominion  of  definite  conditions,  and  it 
finds  its  test  of  adequacy,  of  universality,  in  the  resumption  of  blocked-up 
movement,  in  comprehension  and  control  of  all  the  elements  entering  into 
the  problem. 

Some  features  essential  to  the  discussion  which  follows  may  be  pointed 
out: 

1.  It  is  important  to  note  the  place  assigned  to  reflection  in  the  logical 
procedure.  The  results  of  biology  and  anthropology  are  utilized:  mind 
has  developed  in  intimate  connection  with  fundamental  racial  necessities.1 
Thought  is  a '“tool,”  a  “means  of  manipulation,”  an  economizing,  directing 
activity,  not  an  implanted  instinct;  it  is  an  analytic  and  synthetic  instru¬ 
ment  designed  to  co-ordinate  and  evaluate  when  instincts,  ways  of  acting, 
conflict.2  In  one  sense,  intellect  is  degraded  as  compared  with  the  formal 
logician’s  description  of  “pure  reason.”  The  judgment  is  not  regarded 
as  a  “necessary”  coalescence  of  ideas:  in  the  eyes  of  the  experimentalists 
the  predicate  is  not  “given”:  it  is  earned.  Reason  is  not  pure  in  the 
ascetic  sense  of  abhorring  sense-data:  following  Hegel,  the  plea  is  that 
categories  develop  with  the  process  of  thinking  in  response  to  opposition: 
they  are  re-formed  by  means  of  the  conflict. 

From  another  point  of  view,  thought  is  assigned  an  enviable  position, 
in  organic  relation  to  will  and  feeling.  Thinking  is  a  mediation  of  impulse, 
and  the  “personal  equation,”  sympathy,  imagination,  and  interest  are 
involved  as  factors  determining  any  concrete  result.  Moreover,  this  type 
of  logic  can  recognize  the  vast  role  of  the  “group  consciousness,”  the 
individually  unconscious.  Consciousness  is  not  merely  individual.  It  is 
social  from  beginning  to  end,  although  passing  through  the  variation  of 
the  individual;  reflection  is  therefore  a  focusing  activity  utilizing  the 
unconscious  and  habitual  within  a  social  medium.  The  significance 
of  thought  is  that  it  controls  the  immediate  direction  of  change  in  a  most 
economical  manner,  secures  a  balancing  of  impulsive  tendencies  and  con¬ 
sequently  a  more  correlated  expenditure  of  effort. 

2.  A  clean-cut  division  between  a  world  of  fact  and  a  world  of  meaning 
is  not  accepted:  the  distinction  is  valid  only  as  a  historical  one  existing 
during  a  definite  emergency.  For  the  disciples  of  the  new  logic  there  is  no 
brute  world  of  scientific  fact,  mechanism,  and  causation  confronted  with  a 

1  Tufts,  Garman  Studies,  pp.  28  ff.;  Jerusalem,  Gedanken  und  Denker,  pp.  138  ff. 

2  Hobhouse,  Morals  in  Evolution,  Vol.  I,  chap.  i. 


CHARACTERISTICS  OF  FUNCTIONAL  LOGIC 


13 


teleological,  spiritual  world  of  meanings:  science,  fact,  data,  for  them  serve 
to  state  the  conditions  under  which  purposive  conduct  must  go  on;  the 
means  are  an  integral  part  of  the  end,  and  change  with  the  problem  at 
hand. 

3.  The  test  of  the  successful  solution  of  a  problem  is  not  a  reference 
back  to  the  facts  unchanged;  neither  is  it  an  appeal  to  a  law,  a  predicate, 
already  made  and  controlling.  The  test  is  a  part  of  the  whole  activity — 
the  initial  facts  becoming  suffused  with  “meaning,”  and  the  universal 
which  served  to  direct  a  previous  reaction  becoming  reconstructed  in 
order  to  fit  into  a  wider  situation. 

4.  Corresponding  to  an  active  belief  in  the  general  related  character 
of  the  physical  universe  (the  presupposition  of  the  physical  scientist),  the 
experimental  logician  thinks  that  one  who  attempts  to  apply  intelligence  to 
the  control  of  social  conditions  assumes  belief  in  “the  essentially  social 
character  of  human  impulse  and  endeavor,’’1  his  object  being,  not  to  con¬ 
vert  naturally  egoistic  propensities  into  social  ones,  but  to  allow  the  social 
nature  of  human  activity  to  express  itself  under  favorable  conditions. 

Summarizing  the  chief  tendencies  of  this  school  of  logical  theory,  it  may 
be  said  that  according  to  the  experimentalists  the  need  for  thought  traces 
back  to  an  “objective  situation”  which  has  become  tensional  and  problem¬ 
atic.  Thought  is  a  reconstructive  activity;  it  is  “reality  advancing”  in 
nature ;  it  is  forward  looking,  and  does  work.  The  predicate  or  hypothesis 
represents  simplification,  control,  and  universality.  One  may  hypostatize 
either  the  “facts”  and  consider  them  changeless,  or  the  supposedly  immu¬ 
table  and  transcendent  “idea.”  In  the  former  case,  there  is  no  satisfactory 
explanation  of  the  way  in  which  universals  can  be  derived  from  the  hand¬ 
ling  of  facts,  however  skilful  the  manipulation;  the  start  is  made  from  per¬ 
ceptual  data,  but  the  constructive  predicate  process  is  skipped.  Since 
hypothesis-making  is  discouraged,  the  universal,  as  with  Mill,2  must  be 
somehow  already  there,  in  “laws  of  nature;”  the  immediate  organic 
interrelation  of  hypothesis  and  fact  is  not  realized,  and  finally  meaning 
remains  separate  from  the  process  of  judging.  In  the  latter  case,  truth  is 
something  already  fixated;  and  universality,  necessity,  and  self-evidency 
are  not  convincingly  correlated  with  the  concrete  act  of  judging;3  if 
changeless  validity  resides  in  a  system  of  relations  already  categorized, 
there  is  some  difficulty  in  explaining  the  manifestly  constructive  character 

1  Mead,  American  Journal  0}  Sociology,  Vol.  V,  p.  370. 

2  System  of  Logic,  Book  III,  chaps,  iii-iv;  Book  III,  chap,  xiv,  sec.  4;  Ashley, 
Studies  in  Logical  Theory,  pp.  160  ff. 

3  Sigwart,  Logic,  Vol.  I,  pp.  27,  28;  cf.  Bradley,  Logic,  p.  10. 


14 


DUALISM  OF  FACT  AND  IDEA 


« 

of  our  thinking  and  how  variations  from  the  habitual  copy  the  transcendent 
truth.  Unity  is  attained  by  sacrificing  manyness. 

These  three  conceptions  taken  from  logical  method,  viz. :  (i)  the  present 
concrete  universality  of  judgment,  (2)  the  immediate  value  of  thinking  for 
the  control  of  conditions,  and  (3)  the  interrelation  of  fact  and  idea  within  a 
problem,  will  be  employed  to  interpret  and  criticize  the  logic  underlying 
important  social  problems  and  the  means  adopted  for  their  solution.  Pre¬ 
liminary  to  the  discussion,  some  general  implications  of  the  logical  dualism 
of  fact  and  idea  must  be  considered. 


IT.  GENERAL  SOCIAL  IMPLICATIONS  OF  THE  DUALISM 

OF  FACT  AND  IDEA 


The  implications  are  twofold.  Emphases  of  the  function  of  fact  and 
idea  embody  themselves  in  the  philosophical  and  social  attitudes  known 
as  empiricism  and  rationalism.  Again,  these  attitudes  are  correlated 
with  concrete  functions  which  groups  perform  in  carrying  on  the  activities 
of  an  organized  society.  The  object  of  this  section  is  to  relate  the  logical 
standpoints  to  social  interests  and  their  theoretical  expression. 

i..  Broadly  viewed,  empiricism  is  the  emphasis  of  the  individual  fact; 
rationalism,  the  emphasis  of  the  universal  idea.  For  the  present  pur¬ 
pose  empiricism  may  be  defined  as  the  tendency  to  shun  all  species  of 
postulated  and  necessary  principles:  it  is  hostile  to  all  that  is  innate 
and  a  priori — to  vested  interest,  prejudice,  and  dogma.  Rationalism1  is 
a  tendency  to  guard  achieved  universals,  rigid  standards  of  truth,  and  the 
organized  in  every  sphere:  the  reality  of  the  One,  the  unification  of  con¬ 
sciousness,  the  soul,  the  state,  and  the  church,  are  its  themes. 

2.  The  ground  of  the  struggle  between  the  upholders  of  the  fact  and 
the  defenders  of  the  idea  in  society  may  be  stated  in  terms  of  the  difference 
of  interest  in  the  “occupations”  as  compared  with  the  “professions.” 
By  occupations  are  meant  those  daily  interests  which  engage  the  attention  of 
men,  which  serve  their  physical  wants,  and,  as  much  as  may  be,  their 
intellectual  needs,  but  which  are  not  of  superior  prestige  and  are  not,  for  the 
time  being,  protected  and  fostered  by  the  community  to  any  such  degree  as 
are  the  professional  interests.  The  latter  represent  a  worked -out  technique, 
the  solidification  of  mind,  as  it  were.  They  are  social  concepts  organized 
into  a  machinery  of  public  activity  and  sheltered  by  all  the  laws  and  con¬ 
ventions  of  the  group  concerned.  The  professional  classes  are,  of  course, 
the  “leisure”  ones — not  necessarily  in  the  sense  that  full  service  is  not 
performed,  but  in  the  sense  that  the  time,  discipline,  and  acquisition  of 
specialized  knowledge  and  dexterity  involved  in  apprenticeship  are  com¬ 
pensated  for  by  special  prerogatives,  social  esteem,  and  exemption  from 

1  Rationalism  is  a  term  of  varied  content.  It  may  mean  the  attained  universal, 
or  the  process  of  reaching  a  new  universal;  one  is  reason  as  authority,  the  other  reason 
against  authority.  Lecky  ( Rationalism  in  Europe ,  Vol.  I,  p.  16)  and  Benn  ( History 
of  Rationalism  in  the  Nineteenth  Century,  Vol.  II,  p.  421)  confine  themselves  to  the 
latter  meaning.  Usage  (3)  distinguished  in  the  article  “Rationalism,”  in  Baldwin's 
Dictionary  corresponds  with  the  meaning  adopted  above. 

15 


i6 


DUALISM  OF  FACT  AND  IDEA 


the  monotonous  activities  which  engage  a  great  deal  of  the  attention  of  the 
more  unspecialized  and  less  socially  recognized  and  protected  occupational 
modes  of  life.  The  distinction  is  itself  a  shifting  one  historically.  For 
example,  the  manufacturing  class  raised  to  importance  by  the  inventions 
ushering  in  the  industrial  revolution,  was  at  first  an  “occupational”  interest 
which  had  to  fight  its  way  against  the  semi-feudal  “professional”  prestige  of 
the  English  landlords.  Now,  the  subordinate  partners  in  the  complex 
economic  organization  which  has  developed  in  all  industrially  advanced 
countries — the  working  class,  the  Fourth  Estate — are  striving  for  recog¬ 
nition,  and  opposed  to  them  stand  the  hierarchy  of  those  who  occupy  con¬ 
trolling  and  sanctioned  places  in  the  “capitalistic”  system  of  production 
and  distribution.  This  contrast  is  important  in  its  bearings  on  the  Marxian 
criticism  of  modern  society,  discussed  in  the  succeeding  section. 

That  the  occupational  classes  become  dissatisfied,  and  direct  attention 
to  the  “facts”  of  their  lot,  that  they  become  more  or  less  united  dissenters 
from  the  established  usages  of  a  conventionalized  state  and  its  “professional  ” 
retainers,  is  as  certain  as  the  universal  reaction  of  the  vested  interests  in  the 
way  of  upholding  strenuously  the  sacredness  of  the  subjective  and  objective 
norms  upon  which  their  supremacy  is  based.  The  underlying  reason  for 
the  struggle  runs  back  to  the  psychological  and  social  origin  of  specialized 
activities.  It  will  be  remembered  that  mind  was  defined  as  a  superior 
method  of  controlling  departures  from  the  usual,  a  selective  agent  for 
securing  control  of  environment.  In  primitive  times,  the  exigencies  of 
communal  living  were  the  driving  forces  determining  the  direction  of  social 
change,  and  attention  was  directed  to  the  bridging-over  of  the  crises  inevi¬ 
table  in  the  precarious  state  of  early  peoples;  the  crafty  medicine  man,  the 
intrepid  hunter,  and  the  old  “wise”  man  wrho  remembered  tradition  were 
rewarded  according  to  their  natural  endowments  and  acquired  aptitudes, 
because  of  their  superior  ability  to  deal  with  unexpected  happenings  or  to 
conserve  the  useful  communal  customs.1  With  the  accumulation  of 
resources,  conquest  of  weaker  tribes,  the  rise  of  a  court  and  a  political  and 
religious  hierarchy,  there  appeared  a  definite  stratification  of  classes,  and 
universally  similar  results  followed.  The  professional  groups  kept  apart 
from  the  common  ranges  of  activity,  except  on  extraordinary  occasions, 
threw  around  themselves  the  cloak  of  ceremony  and  taboo,  and  rested  on 
their  superior  acquisitions  of  skill  and  knowledge;  while  the  “lower”  strata 
were  bound  down  to  routine,  deprived  of  the  opportunities  of  initiative, 
and  forced  to  perform  the  unillumined  labor  making  possible  the  leisure 
of  the  official  groups.  Wherever  this  situation  exists,  a  twofold  misfortune 

1  Cf.  Thomas,  The  Medicine  Man  and  the  Professional  Occupations. 


IMPLICATIONS  OF  DUALISM  OF  FACT  AND  IDEA 


17 


appears:  the  significance  of  the  whole  life  is  lost,  both  to  the  professional 
keepers  of  the  “idea,”  and  to  those  who  represent  the  factual  unorganized 
“matter.”  The  professional  groups,  absorbed  in  perfecting  and  preserv¬ 
ing  technique  and  established  norms,  become  isolated  from  the  common 
life.  The  normal  freedom  of  contact  is  broken.  The  “dispossessed” 
gain,  sometimes  in  stolidity,  sometimes  in  passionate  revolt,  and  at  all 
times  in  strong  distrust  of  that  mode  of  reasoning  the  misuse  of  which  they 
observe  in  the  professional  groups  above  them.1  They  feel  dumbly  the 
facts  of  their  unlovely  destiny,  facts  which  to  them  are  without  meaning. 
To  the  professional  group,  conversely,  thought — the  idea — is  a  thing  for 
itself,  not  for  active  reconstruction  of  the  entire  society.2 

3.  Philosophy  has  many  aspects,  but  out  of  its  possible  functions  may 
be  distinguished  two  which  are  relevant  to  this  discussion:  (a)  It  is  a 
reflective  statement  of  the  meaning  of  individual  and  communal  experience, 
a  summing-up  and  idealization  of  what  is  regarded  as  most  worthful.3  ( b ) 
In  addition  to  its  idealizing  function,  which  is  necessarily  prone  to  accept 
and  rationalize  the  existent,  it  has  a  democratic  and  active  interest  in  the 
future:  it  pleads  for  a  remaking  of  the  real  on  the  score  of  possible  irration¬ 
ality.  It  is  a  negation  of  the  established  values. 

To  separate  absolutely  the  two  functions  is  not  justifiable;  yet  the 
history  of  philosophy  seems  to  warrant,  in  the  large,  a  distinction  between 
types  of  philosophical  attitudes.  The  first  embodies  the  animus  of  the 
rationalist  and  the  “professional”  interest;  the  second,  the  animus  of  the 
empiricist  and  the  “occupational”  interest.  A  consideration  of  certain 
features  of  Greek  and  modern  philosophical  development  will  serve  to 
expand  the  position  taken,  as  well  as  to  give  background  for  a  treatment 
of  Hegel  and  of  the  embodiment  of  the  two  attitudes  in  the  theory  and 
social  circumstances  characteristic  of  his  time. 

Abstracting  from  other  aspects,  Greece  affords  an  example  of  the 
rationalistic  and  professional  interest  come  to  philosophical  expression.4 
The  dialectic  of  intellect  at  first  used  as  a  means  of  social  interpretation 
and  reform  lost  contact  with  actual  problems  as  the  city  state  decayed. 
Plato,  realizing  the  instrumental  function  of  the  idea,  hypostatized  it,  and 

1  Cf.  the  evidence  collected  in  Ward,  The  Ancient  Lowly. 

2  Of  course,  this  description  is  a  generalized  one,  simply  suggesting  how  an  initial 
functional  “division  of  labor”  becomes  non-functional. 

3  McTaggart  confines  philosophy  to  this  office  ( Studies  in  Hegelian  Cosmology, 
P-  195)- 

4  Cf.  Dewey,  Significance  0}  the  Problem  0}  Knowledge;  and  “  Some  Stages  of 
Logical  Thought,”  Philos.  Rev.,  Vol.  IX,  pp.  465  ff. 


i8 


DUALISM  OF  FACT  AND  IDEA 


in  his  psychology  of  classes,  reserved  it  for  the  philosopher  kings.  '  With 
Aristotle,  despair  of  reviving  the  political  greatness  of  Athens  led  to  a 
further  specialization  of  intellect;  thinking  became  a  fascinating  pursuit 
for  its  own  sake,  and  the  magnanimity  of  the  philosopher  could  not  conceal 
disdain  for  the  artisan  and  the  slaves  by  nature.  The  “  occupational  ” 
interests  after  Socrates  did  not  find  adequate  expression,  as  they  did  in  the 
modern  empirical  development. 

The  plain  historical  account  of  the  English  empiricist  was  largely 
motived  by  human  interests.  Innate  ideas  stood  for  hereditary  privileges, 
violation  of  rights,  and  uncriticized  concepts.  The  liberals,  the  Utilitarian 
reformers,  used  the  logic  of  the  fact:  they  were  protesters,  and  to  serve 
their  purposes  simplified  unduly  the  individual  and  society.  They  were 
better  destroyers  than  builders,  and  found  it  easier  to  observe  the  unfor¬ 
tunate  facts  than  to  organize  and  put  meaning  into  them.  As  a  whole, 
they  took  the  anti-professional  stand,  although  it  is  true  that  when  their 
demands  were  incorporated  into  the  social  technique,  the  possessors  of 
the  privileges  secured  became  in  turn  the  conservative  and  professional 
groups. 

On  the  continent,  where  the  sway  of  Greek  rationalism,  Roman  organi¬ 
zation,  and  scholastic  doctrine  was  more  marked,  reflective  thought  linked 
itself  to  the  structure  of  control  and  to  the  sacredness  of  an  organized  con¬ 
sciousness  and  institutions.  The  rationalist  denied  that  chaotic  sensations, 
however  associated,  could  explain  the  depths  of  the  inner  life.  Individual¬ 
ity,  consciousness,  could  not  be  resolved  into  the  impulsive  reaction  and 
mechanical  sequences  of  the  empiricists.  For  the  rationalist  there  was 
always  present  a  more  inclusive  Self,  a  universalizing  something,  whether 
in  existing  secular  institution  or  in  transcendent  spiritual  forces,  which 
served  as  a  standard  of  reference  for  the  fleeting  moment.  The  individual 
could  always  escape  from  his  isolation  and  find  support  and  consolation 
in  a  system  of  relations,  a  realm  of  ideas,  which  although  lying  outside  his 
fluid  states  of  consciousness,  yet  gave  permanence  and  validity  to  them. 
Hence  arose  a  certain  detachment  from  the  practicality  of  daily  experience, 
a  refined  form  of  scholastic  other-worldliness,  and,  on  the  whole,  from 
Descartes,  an  interest  in  one  phase  of  social  control,  the  religious.  In  the 
course  of  a  suggestive  study,1  Bush  remarks:  “Was  it  not  inevitable  that, 
not  nature  and  man  as  humanly  experienced,  but  the  soul,  the  world  and 
the  deity  as  metaphysically  conceived,  should  be  the  theme  of  ‘modern 
philosophy’  ?  -Why  be  surprised  that  the  metaphysics  based  on  the  con¬ 
cept  of  consciousness  seems  to  have  more  to  do  with  some  other  world  than 

1  Essays,  Philosophical  and  Psychological  (James  Memorial  Volume),  p.  ioi. 


IMPLICATIONS  OF  DUALISM  OF  FACT  AND  IDEA 


19 


with  this  one  ?  It  is  the  pride  of  idealism  that,  instead  of  guiding  the  work 
of  actual  knowledge,  instead  of  throwing  helpful  light  on  the  technique 
of  discovery,  this  type  of  philosophy  issued  in  religious  metaphysics.” 
The  rationalist  asserted  the  value  of  order,  of  the  general,  of  the  sequence 
of  “psychical  heredity”  as  opposed  to  the  caprice  of  variation,  and  was 
thus  admirably  fitted  to  serve  as  the  exponent  of  an  organized  society  with 
its  established  usages,  professional  functions,  and  regulating  norms.1 

It  is  not  presumed  that  this  brief  characterization  of  the  “professional” 
attitude  in  Greek  and  modern  continental  thought  as  opposed  to  the  empir¬ 
ical  development  represents  anything  more  than  one  tendency:  and  the 
cross  currents  and  innumerable  combinations  of  individualistic  and  ration¬ 
alistic  tendencies  in  the  various  thinkers  make  anything  more  than  a  com¬ 
posite  picture  impracticable.  There  is  no  attempt,  of  course,  to  minimize 
the  supreme  value  of  the  continental  probing  into  the  mysteries  and  com¬ 
plexities  of  consciousness;  the  philosophical  significance  of  its  analysis  is 
not  denied  when  one  insists  upon  the  fact  that  philosophical  reflection  is 
one  phase  of  a  vaster  social  experience.  The  main  thing,  which  writers  from 
other  points  of  view  have  often  noted,  is  to  detect  the  connection  between 
the  logician  who  treats  the  predicate  idea  as  already  formulated — the 

type  of  thought  insistent  upon  the  philosopher  king’s  exclusive  possession 

\ 

of  real  insight — and  the  high  value  placed  upon  those  professional  activities 
in  society  which  partake  of  organization  and  consistency  of  working.  This 
tendency  of  thought  may  become  anti-social  and  reactionary  in  so  far  as  it 
contends,  in  whatever  guise  of  dogma,  divine  right,  or  vested  interest,  that 
the  already  formulated  is  permanent  and  “given”  for  all  time  because  it 
seems  universal,  necessary,  and  self-evident.  Its  purity  of  thought  and 
sacredness  of  institution  may  be  secured  by  sacrificing  more  inclusive 
ideas  and  controlling  devices.  Similarly,  the  harking-back,  on  the  part  of 
the  empiricist,  to  initial  “facts,”  a  supposedly  unchangeable  subject  of 
the  judgment,  may  lead  to  a  static  universal  outside  the  reconstructive 
process.  This  is  the  logical  flawr  in  all  revolutionary  and  atomistic  atti¬ 
tudes — adherence  to  chosen  facts  and  their  partial  meanings  and  a  con¬ 
sequent  overlooking  of  the  control  value  of  the  existing  formulation,  or 
at  least  the  right  of  such  formulation  to  enter  into  the  new  reconstruction. 

1  Cf.  Moore,  Jour.  Philos.  Psych,  and  Sci.  Methods,  Vol.  VI,  pp.  291  ff. 


III.  THE  SYSTEMS  OF  HEGEL  AND  MARX  AS  EMBODI¬ 
MENTS  OF  THE  SOCIAL  IMPLICATIONS  OF 
LOGICAL  METHOD 

The  social  implications  of  logical  attitudes  are  admirably  displayed  in 
the  philosophy  of  Hegel  and  its  reaction,  the  socialistic  system  of  Marx 
and  his  followers.  Hegel  touched  the  goal  of  continental  rationalism,1 
for  by  reason  of  its  comprehensiveness,  its  symmetry,  and  its  self-consistent 
unfoldment,  there  appeared  no  secure  place  in  his  view  for  the  variational, 
the  untried  and  experimental;  since  whenever  a  presentation  became  con¬ 
scious  at  all,  it  was  in  the  clutches  of  necessary  and  relentless  laws  of  spirit. 
There  was  nothing  of  the  looseness  and  tentative  character  of  English 
empiricism:  the  implicit  and  immanent  Idea  must  maintain  its  absolute 
supremacy.  The  world  to  Hegel  was  one  of  meaning,  and  since  meaning 
is  relation,  that  which  is  organized  and  ordered  must  have  inner  justification 
and  sacredness.  To  attain  a  definite  present  purpose  implies  want,  dis¬ 
satisfaction,  the  maladjustment  of  the  habitual  and  customary;  and  since 
for  Hegel  it  is  the  supreme  purpose  to  attain  a  coalescence  of  existence  and 
meaning  in  a  sole  reality,  that  incompleteness  which  besets  our  phenomenal 
world  of  baffled  endeavor  and  experimental  science  is  hard  to  reconcile  with 
the  eternal  perfection  of  a  self-perpetuating  organization,  the  Absolute 
Idea.2  At  least,  it  seemed  to  the  enthusiasts  for  a  positive  union  of  reflective 
attitude  and  social  welfare  that  Hegel  had  reduced  a  world  of  struggling 
men  to  a  march  of  unreal  categories.3  The  man  in  whose  writing  and 

1  Certainly  there  was  no  severer  critic  of  the  mediaeval  and  Spinoza  type  of  ration¬ 
alism  than  Hegel.  Yet  his  perfected  idealism  was  a  form  of  rationalism  in  that  the 
evolution  of  reality  was  taken  to  be  a  self-unfolding  of  mind.  The  first  and  funda¬ 
mental  concepts  and  laws  which  earlier  rationalism  had  set  up  to  be  deductively  employed 
as  revelations  of  truth,  Hegel  regarded  as  incomplete  stages  of  the  realization  of  the 
immanent  Idea  which  guarantees  the  teleological  process.  By  including  all  temporal 
and  phenomenal  moments  within  the  sweep  of  reason,  of  relation,  he,  of  course,  was 
able  to  incorporate  science  and  historical  sequence  within  the  absolute  self;  the  empir¬ 
ical  became  in  varying  degree  “illusion.”  Cf.  conclusion  to  the  article,  “  Rationalism,” 
in  Baldwin’s  Dictionary;  James ,  Hibbert  Journal,  October,  1908,  p.  71;  Windelband, 
Die  Geschichte  der  neueren  Philosophic,  Vol.  II,  p.  302. 

2  Logic,  chap.  i. 

3  For  the  post -Hegelian  reaction,  cf.  Rae,  Contemporary  Socialism ,  chap,  iv; 
Wallace,  article  “Hegel”  in  Enc.  Brit.;  Hoffding,  The  History  0}  Modern  Philosophy , 
Vol.  II.  pp.  266  ff . ;  Engels,  Feuerbach,  The  Roots  0}  the  Socialist  Philosophy,  pp.  52  ff.; 
Seligman,  Economic  Interpretation  of  History,  chaps,  ii  and  iii. 


20 


SYSTEMS  OF  HEGEL  AND  MARX 


21 


“propaganda”  the  post-Hegelian  reaction  worked  out  most  concrete  social 
effects  was  Karl  Marx,  the  leader  and  inspirer  of  one  of  the  significant 
popular  movements  of  modern  times.1  The  socialist  standpoint  as  a 
world-philosophy  rests  upon  a  logic  of  social  reform  and  offers,  in  contrast 
with  the  Hegelian  system,  a  point  of  approach  to  an  interpretation  of  many- 
sided  social  problems.  The  pertinent  points  of  analogy  and  contrast  may 
be  distinguished  as  follows: 

1.  There  is  in  each  an  insistence  upon  friction  and  antithesis  as  essential 
moments  in  the  journey  to  synthesis.2  Both  Hegel  and  Marx  profess  to 
think  in  teleological  terms:  the  Hegelian  logic  of  reality  is  guided  and 
drawn  by  the  immanent  force  of  the  complete  Form,  the  Notion,  just  as 
the  war  of  the  classes  in  Marxian  phrase  must  lead  by  inner  necessity  to 
the  goal  of  the  co-operative  commonwealth  after  the  bitter  antithesis  of 
capitalist  and  laborer. 

2.  In  each  system  lurks  an  element  of  fatalism.3  The  Absolute  after 
all  does  not  depend  upon  finite  struggle  and  achievement,4  and  the  material 
dialectic  of  economic  environment  seems  to  arise  spontaneously  from  the 
soil.  In  Hegel  thought  as  the  sole  reality  is  portrayed  in  its  reconstructive, 
teleological  character,  but  without  organic  intimacy  with  human  purposes; 
laws,  arts,  religion,  and  institutions  come  into  being  somehow  as  realizations 
of  the  deeper  Idea,  just  as  in  the  Marxian  inversion  of  the  spiritual  dialectic 
they  are  epiphenomena  of  an  evolving  economic  substratum.5  The 
sweep  and  inevitableness  of  the  evolution  resembles  the  close-knit  sym¬ 
metry  and  impressiveness  of  the  rationalistic  standpoint:  there  -is  an 
imputed  end  controlling  the  functions  of  society,  an  organization  (so 
vividly  appreciated  by  Hegel)  not  dependent  upon  the  chance  desire  of 
the  wayward  individual.  Whether  or  not  one  wills  it,  the  economic  evolu¬ 
tion  goes  on;  the  advance  of  the  machine  industry  is  given  an  impersonal 
and  cosmic  character;  there  is  rigid  necessity  of  the  present  capitalistic 

1  Stein,  Die  sociale  Frage,  pp.  288  ff.;  Wallace,  Lectures  and  Essays,  chap,  viii; 
Hoffding,  Ethik,  pp.  303  ff.;  Ritchie,  Natural  Rights,  ,  p.  276;  Barth,  Philosophie 
der  Geschichte  als  Sociologie,  pp.  270  ff.;  Bonar,  Philosophy  and  Political  Economy, 
pp.  280  ff. 

2  Adamson,  Development  of  Modern  Philosophy,  Vol.  I,  pp.  271  ff. 

3  Russell,  German  Social  Democracy,  chap,  i;  Veblen,  Quart.  Jour.  Economics, 
Vol.  XX,  p.  580. 

4  Logic,  p.  352. 

5  Labriola,  Socialism  and  Philosophy,  p.  60.  Representative  utterances  of  Marx 
are  found  in  Capital  (translation,  London,  1901)  Preface,  pp.  xxviii  ff.,  and  Misere 
de  la  philosophie  (Paris,  1896),  p.  143.  Cf.  Engels,  Socialism:  Utopian  and  Scientific, 
for  an  elaboration  of  the  Marxian  position. 


22 


DUALISM  OF  FACT  AND  IDEA 


regime,  and  the  inner  contradictions  of  the  system  prepare  the  way  for  the 
succeeding  stage  in  the  social  dialectic.1 

3.  Although  from  the  standpoint  of  the  Absolute  Teleology  with  its 
predetermined  culminating  point,  both  systems  appear  quietistic*  and 
fatalistic,  from  another  standpoint  they  are  both  revolutionary.  Hegel 
could  only  free  himself  from  radicalism  by  assuming  that  the  previous 
self-determinations  of  the  Idea  in  history  found  peace  and  satisfaction  in 
the  organization  of  the  Prussian  government.  It  is  not  true  to  say,  as  have 
over-zealous  critics,  that  Hegel  indiscriminately  eulogized  all  the  arrange¬ 
ments  of  the  bureaucratic  society  of  his  day:  yet  it  is  true  that  he  was  so 
much  the  son  of  his  own  time  that  devices  that  were  not  entirely  rational 
were  pronounced  real.  However  that  may  be,  the  restless  triads  of  Hegel’s 
logic  do  not  create  the  impression  of  conservatism  as  regards  the  solution  of 
any  problem,  because  there  is  advanced  no  convincing  assurance  that  any 
final  synthesis  will  ever  obviate  the  necessity  of  further  reconstruction. 
As  already  observed,  Marx  cast  his  social  philosophy  in  the  forms  of  the 
Hegelian  trinitarian  process,  and  notwithstanding  the  certitude  of  inevitable 
transition  from  the  negative  moment  of  capitalism  to  the  synthesis  in 
socialism,  and  the  consequent  futility  of  human  choice  as  a  really  effective 
force,  the  practical  consequence  was  a  war-cry — the  oppressed  were  to 
throw  off  their  chains  by  denouncing  the  bourgeoisie ,  by  securing  political 
power  and  thus  entering  upon  the  classless  society.  How  such  “propa¬ 
ganda”  and  energy  could  appreciably  affect  the  predetermined  dissolution  of 
the  present  capitalistic  moment  of  the  dialectic  was  not  clearly  explained. 
In  both  systems  are  the  same  antinomies  between  our  human  purposes  and 
a  final  purpose.  The  human  purposes  constantly  reach  out  to  richer  and 
wider  regions  of  conquest;  the  final  purpose  which  our  human  endeavors 
“copy”  is  attained  in  an  Absolute  Self  or  an  Absolute  Society.2 

4.  The  distinction  already  made  between  the  profession  and  the  occupa¬ 
tion  forms  one  feature  of  the  thought  of  Hegel  and  a  major  motive  in  the 
Marxian  indictment  of  society.  Hegel  took  a  view  of  the  prerogatives 

1  Capital,  p.  512. 

2  The  mixture  of  fatalism  and  “  propaganda  ”  to  achieve  immediate  converts  is  a 
basis  for  one  type  of  religious  attitude  which  Mohammedanism  has  found  useful;  and 
the  inability  to  copy  an  Absolute  purpose  and  identify  it  with  a  concrete  purpose  was 
the  basis  of  Hegelian  mysticism  in  which  “contradictions”  were  transcended. 

Jaures  points  out  the  religious  fervor  of  Marx  in  showing  the  inexorable  dissolution 
of  the  capitalistic  regime.  Marx  also  had  a  few  racial  and  temperamental  traits 
similar  to  the  Hebrew  prophets  of  woe.  For  personal  characteristics  cf.  Liebknecht’s 
Memoirs  oj  Marx.  Cf.  Russell,  op.  cit.,  p.  7,  for  a  statement  of  the  religious  character 
of  socialism;  also  Le  Bon,  Psychology  of  Socialism,  pp.  85  ff. 


SYSTEMS  OF  HEGEL  AND  MARX 


23 


and  value  of  the  philosopher  and  the  ruling  classes  which,  in  spite  of  the 
eighteenth-century  wave  of  democracy,  allied  him  with  the  Platonic- 
Aristotelian  standpoint.  It  is  the  business  of  the  thinker  to  exhaust  the 
meaning  of  the  Real.1  A  statement,  characteristic  of  one  side  at  least 
of  his  teaching,  is  found  in  his  Philosophy  of  Religion:2 

Philosophy  forms  in  this  connection  a  sanctuary  apart,  and  those  who  serve 
in  it  constitute  an  isolated  order  of  priests  who  must  not  mix  with  the  world,  and 
whose  work  is  to  protect  the  possessions  of  Truth.  How  the  actual  present-day 
world  is  to  find  its  way  out  of  this  state  of  disruption,  and  what  form  it  is  to  take, 
are  questions  which  must  be  left  to  itself  to  settle,  and  to  deal  with  them  is  not  the 
immediate  practical  business  and  concern  of  philosophy. 

Following  out  his  conviction  of  the  supreme  function  of  pure  reason,  in 
his  Philosophy  of  Right  he  estimates  the  classes  in  the  community  accord¬ 
ing  to  their  degree  of  reflective  ability:  the  “ substantial ”  class  follow  a  way 
of  life  needing  but  little  reflection  and  slightly  modified  by  subjective  voli¬ 
tion;3  the  “industrial”  class,  involved  in  more  complex  relationships, 
develop  a  sense  of  individuality  and  a  desire  of  freedom,  while  the  fully 
reflective  class  are  concerned  with  the  universal  interests  of  society,  must 
be  free  from  the  direct  task  of  providing  for  themselves,  and  should  be 
rewarded  and  protected  by  the  state.4  The  utility  of  the  prince  and  con¬ 
stitutional  monarchy  in  effecting  the  predominance  of  the  reflective  and 
administrative  orders  is  fully  recognized.5 

Marx,  and  the  socialists  generally,  to  offset  the  eulogy  of  the  professional 
and  administrative  classes,  saw  the  rising  strength  and  possibilities  of  the 
mass  of  workers  brought  into  prominence  by  the  industrial  revolution — 
men  who  had  hitherto  counted  little  in  the  active  control  of  the  state.  Their 
labor  seemed  to  him  of  immense  significance:  far  greater  indeed  than  that 
of  the  professions.  These — churchman,  lawyer,  professor,  philosopher, 
and  state  official — Marx  considered  “ideologists,”  worshipers  of  a  non¬ 
functional  reason,  a  sheltered  parasitic  group  who  strive  to  continue  the 
capitalistic  era  of  exploitation.6  Instead  of  idealizing  and  entrenching  the 

1  Philosophy  of  Right ,  Preface. 

2  Vol.  Ill,  p.  15 1. 

3  Dyde’s  translation,  p.  200. 

4  Philosophy  of  Right,  p.  202. 

s  Ibid.,  p.  278. 

6  Cf.  the  eloquent  denunciation  in  the  first  section  of  the  Communist  Manifesto. 
Joseph  Dietzgen,  whom  Marx  called  the  philosopher  of  the  socialist  movement,  develops 
this  phase  of  the  Marxian  doctrine.  Cf.  his  Philosophical  Essays,  pp.  226  ff.,  and  the 
Positive  Outcome  of  Philosophy,  passim. 


24 


DUALISM  OF  FACT  AND  IDEA 


customary  norms,  he  used  his  Hegelian  schema  to  give  to  the  Fourth 
Estate  a  sense  of  historical  position,  a  consciousness  of  occupational  func¬ 
tion,  which  hitherto  had  belonged  to  the  professional  estates.  He  strove 
to  enlarge  the  sphere  of  effective  political  persons  and  it  is  not  strange  that 
Labor  became  the  capitalized  word  of  his  system.  The  meaning  of  the 
world  was  to  be  no  longer  the  exclusive  possession  of  the  philosopher  of 
reason  in  whose  eyes  the  rational  and  real  mirrors  the  Absolute  and  justifies 
the  permanence  of  the  already  established;  instead,  the  workingman  was 
set  in  the  center  of  the  historic  drama — the  workingman,  who  by  his 
strategic  position  is  destined  to  objectify  the  final  co-operative  and  syn¬ 
thetic  stage  of  the  social  process.  Thus  the  “occupational”  interests 
become  meaningful;  monotonous  toil,  insufficient  wage,  “exploitation” 
by  the  capitalist,  diligence  through  the  discipline  of  the  machine  in¬ 
dustry,  are  the  very  means  by  which  the  workers  achieve  a  “class  con¬ 
sciousness,”  ability  to  co-operate,  and  political  power;  ancient  territorial 
wars  are  outdone  by  the  war  of  profession  against  occupation,  of  “ bour¬ 
geoisie ”  against  “proletariat.” 

5.  The  nature  of  a  specific  logical  problem  according  to  the  view  of 
the  instrumentalists,  suggests  some  limitations  to  the  all-sufficiency  of  the 
Hegelian  and  Marxian  attitudes.  In  general  it  may  be  said  that  both 
positions  fall  short  because  of  a  false  emphasis  placed  either  upon  the  factual 
or  upon  the  ideational  moment  in  the  interaction  of  subject  and  predicate, 
and  a  failure  to  hold  fast  to  the  historical  and  relative  ascendency  which 
now  one  and  now  the  other  assumes.  There  results  an  imperfect  assimi¬ 
lation  of  rationalistic  and  empirical  presuppositions  and  in  so  far  as  the 
organic  relation  of  fact  and  idea  is  not  grasped,  all  the  consequences  of  one¬ 
sided  statements  of  logical  procedure,  adduced  in  the  previous  sections, 
obtain.  In  either  standpoint  there  is  a  dependence  upon  some  kind  of 
“given.”  In  the  Hegelian  the  given  is  psychical,  the  implicit  Idea.  The 
facts  of  the  empirical  world  of  science  and  struggle  are  soon  transcended: 
only  the  rational  is  real,  and  whether  that  rationality  is  of  our  finding  or  of 
another  type  of  consciousness  is  a  moot  point  in  Hegelian  interpretation. 
At  any  rate,  although  the  process  of  hypothesis-making  is  acutely  analyzed, 
we  are  left  with  consistency,  residing  in  thought  itself,  as  our  test  of  truth. 
We  begin  and  end  with  thought  and  are  never  quite  sure  whether  our  idea 
corresponds  with  or  “mirrors  the  Notion.”  Correspondingly,  in  so  far 
as  Marx  depends  upon  the  spiritual  logic  of  Hegel  to  establish  the  truth  of 
his  faith  in  the  Absolute  Society  we  are  never  quite  confident  how  it  is  that 
our  empirical  purposes  are  instrumental  in  leading  us  thither.  But  Marx 
has  another  weapon  in  his  equipment.  For  practical  purposes  of  propa- 


SYSTEMS  OF  HEGEL  AND  MARX 


25 


ganda  he  uses  the  empirical  presuppositions.1  The  immediately  real  he 
derives  from  two  sources:  first,  the  conversion  of  the  dialectic  of  reason  to 
economic  material,  and  second,  the  Utilitarian-French  reliance  upon  the 
manipulation  of  concrete  sense- data,  the  significance  of  which  he  was  quite 
as  much  unable  to  explain  because  given,  as  were  the  English  liberals. 
Either  position  landed  him  in  a  difficulty  of  explaining  the  immediate 
problem  on  its  own  merits,  without  appealing  to  the  empirical  “laws  of 
nature”2  or  the  rationalistic  realm  of  already  formulated  meaning  beyond 
the  act  of  judgment.  The  ancient  dualism  of  a  world  of  matter,  of  fact, 
and  a  world  of  meaning,  of  idea,  confronted  him.  Hence  arose  his  often 
criticized  “materialism.”  It  must  be  repeated  that  “materialism”  may 
proceed  alike  from  rationalistic  and  from  empirical  grounds:  one  may 
rely  upon  psychical  givens  or  factual  givens,  in  so  far  as  there  is  a  cutting- 
short  of  the  cycle  of  a  complete  act  and  a  resting  upon  one  moment  of  the 
experience  as  exhausting  the  significance  of  the  problem  at  hand.  Mate¬ 
rialism  simply  denies  the  progressive  unfolding  of  meaning  in  the  specious 
present  and  may  exist  within  a  teleological  or  a  mechanical  system,  when 
the  functional  character  of  the  mechanism  and  the  purpose  is  lost  sight  of. 

A  proof  of  the  borrowing  of  empirical  postulates  of  natural  rights, 
hedonistic  calculus,  and  the  abstract  individual — the  devices  of  the  English 
reformers — is  seen  in  the  Marxian  conception  of  human  nature.3  Both 

1  Foxwell,  in  the  Introduction  to  his  translation  of  Menger’s  Right  to  the  Whole 
Product  0}  Labor  (London,  1899),  overemphasizes  the  English  contribution,  pp.  xxv  ff. 
For  general  criticisms  of  the  limitations  of  the  individualistic  standpoint,  cf.  Veblen, 
Quart.  Jour.  Economics,  Vol.  XX,  pp.  576,  577,  and  Vol.  XXI,  p.  299;  Ritchie,  Darwin 
and  Hegel,  chap,  vi,  and  Natural  Rights,  pp.  102,  103  and  pp.  268-70:  Bonar,  Phi¬ 
losophy  and  Political  Economy,  pp.  186  ff.;  Adamson,  Development  0}  Modern  Phi¬ 
losophy,  Vol.  II,  pp.  90,  91;  Willoughby,  Social  Justice,  chap,  v;  also  Foxwell  in 
Menger,  op.  cit.,  Introduction,  pp.  cvi-cvii. 

2  It  is  instructive  to  notice  that  in  Mill,  the  mechanical  conception  of  empiricism 
leads  to  a  sympathy  with  socialism;  cf.  his  Logic,  Book  VI,  chap,  xi,  sec.  4:  “the 
increasing  preponderance  of  the  collective  agency  of  the  species  over  all  minor  causes 
is  constantly  bringing  the  general  evolution  of  the  race  into  something  which  deviates 
less  from  a  certain  and  preappointed  track.”  (Italics  mine.) 

3  Sombart  says,  “A  word  of  Pierre  Leroux’  seems  to  me  as  if  coined  for  Marx: 
‘  il  etait  ....  fort  penetrant  sur  le  mauvais  cote  de  la  nature  humaine.’  So  it  was 
easy  for  him  to  believe  in  Hegel’s  teaching  that  ‘evil  ’  has  accomplished  all  the  develop¬ 
ment  of  mankind” — Socialism,  p.  92.  The  Marxian  ethical  view  is  seen  at  its  baldest 
in  the  coarse  allegations  of  bourgeois  depravity  in  the  Manifesto:  Capital  is  full  of 
undoubtedly  correct  evidence  of  inhuman  exspoliation  and  fraud;  cf.  chap,  xxi,  on  the 
“Genesis  of  the  Industrial  Capitalist;”  Simkhovitch  in  Political  Science  Quarterly, 
Vol.  XIII,  p.  200,  considers  the  Marxian  concept  of  ethics;  cf.  Masaryk,  Grundlagen 
des  Marxismus,  p.  490. 


26 


DUALISM  OF  FACT  AND  IDEA 


employer  and  employee  “naturally”  are  dominated  by  acquisitive  propen¬ 
sities:  both  are  “selfish”  and  anxious  to  be  protected  in  their  rights  and 
prerogatives;1  there  is  no  hope  that  truly  ethical  and  social  virtues  will 
spring  up  until  “psychological  and  material”  conditions  shall  be  entirely 
harmonious  for  “adaptation  of  inner  and  outer.”  There  is  the  same  diffi¬ 
culty  which  Spencer  tried  to  meet:  how  to  evolve  a  moral  individual  by 
adaptation  to  an  environment  which,  by  hypothesis,  must  evolve  separately 
and  build  up  “representative”  ideas  and  moral  dispositions.  Of  course 
this  is  only  another  way  of  saying  that  Marx  failed  to  give  prominence  to 
the  reaction  of  active  social  impulses  of  the  individual  upon  the  environ¬ 
ing  circumstances.  He  was  so  impatient  of  the  bourgeois  “intellectuals” 
on  account  of  their  refusal  to  respond  to  the  demands  of  the  radicals  that 
he  could  see  no  other  explanation  than  that  of  “economic  interest.”  He 
concluded  that  those  who  direct  the  industrial  machinery  inevitably  develop 
predatory  class  virtues  because  of  their  individualistic,  competitive  exploit¬ 
ing  of  resources  and  men:  the  proletariat,  equally  self-regarding  by  nature, 
are  constrained  to  co-operate  with  fellow-workers  and  subordinate  private 
inclination  to  the  welfare  of  their  class.  The  increasing  strength  of  the 
proletarian  virtues  springing  from  the  necessity  of  group  solidarity  pre¬ 
pares  for  the  perfect  adaptation  of  the  coming  society. 

This  view  is  utilitarian  and  criticism  of  it  has  been  a  favorite  employ¬ 
ment  which  needs  no  addition.  From  the  logical  point  of  view,  however, 
it  is  sufficient  to  mark  the  fallacy  of  assuming  that  one  can  deduce  ah 
extra  from  a  given  set  of  facts  a  given  set  of  values  or  meanings.  Of  course 
the  central  point  of  ethical  theory  is  that  it  is  precisely  the  re-forming  of 
the  material  conditions,  the  revolt  against  the  “cosmic  order”  which 
creates  the  ethical  situation.2 

A  summary  of  the  matter  from  the  logical  standpoint  may  be  put  thus : 
Hegel  and  Marx  did  not  make  clear  to  the  plain  man  that  the  essence  of 
theory,  of  the  hypothesis,  is  brought  out  in  application,  in  a  constant  back 
and  forth  reaction  of  concept  and  percept.  It  is  development,  the  activity 
of  response,  which  puts  content  into  any  norm.  The  unreality  in  the 
spinning  of  the  Hegelian  categories  as  well  as  in  the  delusive  symmetry 
of  the  Marxian  concepts  can  be  traced  back  to  the  omission  of  that  phase 
of  logical  method  in  which  the  hypothesis  is  applied.  If  such  application 
does  not  take  place  we  must  be  content  with  unchanging,  ready-made  fact, 
mechanism,  laws  of  nature,  or  given,  necessary  ideas.  Either  there  is  inex- 

1  Cf.  Sombart,  Der  moderne  Kapitalismus ,  Vol.  I,  pp.  378  ff.,  on  “The  Genesis 
of  the  Capitalistic  Spirit.” 

2  Huxley,  Evolution  and  Ethics. 


SYSTEMS  OF  HEGEL  AND  MARX 


27 


orable  finality  in  the  mechanism  or  an  inevitable  procession  of  the  imma¬ 
nent  notion  and  its  objectification  in  economic  stages.  Logically  speaking, 
this  is  the  result  when  the  subject  is  cut  away  from  the  predicate;  the  copula 
must  then  be  external  to  the  process  of  solving  the  problem. 

How  the  failure  to  reconstruct  the  predicate,  the  hypothesis,  to  corre¬ 
spond  with  recurring  facts  has  worked  in  the  case  of  the  Marxian  theories 
must  now  be  considered. 


IV.  INTERACTION  OF  FACT  AND  IDEA  AS  IELUSTRATED 
BY  THE  CHANGES  IN  MARXIAN  DOCTRINES 


The  purpose  of  this  section  is  to  suggest  by  reference  to  typical  features 
of  the  development  of  socialist  theory  and  practice  that  it  is  not  possible  to 
deduce  the  events  of  societary  evolution  conclusively  by  a  logical  process. 
One  cannot  assume  in  advance  that  the  facts  will  follow  certain  necessary 
combinations  or  that  the  hypotheses  will  need  no  remaking:  if  the  subject 
of  judgment  is  put  into  motion,  as  experience  demonstrates,  the  predicate 
must  participate  in  the  struggle  and  suffer  change. 

That  the  history  of  economic  phenomena  has  not  as  yet  fully  substan¬ 
tiated  the  original  Marxian  formulation  of  the  inevitable  trend  it  is  easy 
to  show.1  New  facts  have  come  to  light  which  cannot,  without  danger  to 
theoretical  consistency,  be  harmonized  with  original  predictions.  To 
prove  the  assertion,  three  points  are  selected  for  brief  treatment:  (i)  the 
alleged  tendency  to  large-scale  production,  (2)  the  doctrine  of  increasing 
misery,  and  (3)  the  socialist  view  of  the  present  state.2 

It  was  the  claim  of  the  Communist  Manifesto*  and  Capital 4  that  there 
is  an  inevitable  and  unlimited  absorption  of  the  small  manufacturer,  trader, 
and  farmer  by  the  monopolistic  enterprises.  This  is  attended  on  the  part 
of  the  worker  by  a  constant  relinquishing  of  the  ownership  of  his  “  tools, ” 
and,  on  the  part  of  the  capitalist,  a  consequent  greater  ease  of  exploiting 
the  “surplus  value”  produced  by  labor.5  Marx  supposed  that  there  would 
be  a  sharply  drawn  antithesis  between  the  propertyless  “proletariat”  and 
the  bourgeois  owners  of  the  means  of  sustaining  life.6  Such  opposition, 
due  to  the  elimination  of  the  petty  producer  by  large  scale  production,  he 
welcomed,  because  by  this  means  the  issues  would  be  clearly  defined, 
“class  consciousness”  fostered,  and  steps  taken  by  which  the  dispossessed 
would  enter  into  their  rightful  inheritance. 

How  far  have  succeeding  developments  sustained  his  theory  of  the 

1  For  recent  discussions  of  the  departures  from  strict  Marxism  sc.  Veblen,  Quart. 
Jour.  Economics,  Vol.  XXI,  and  Simkhovitch,  Pol.  Sci.  Quart.,  Vol.  XIII,  pp.  652  ff. 

2  Marx  himself  did  not,  as  did  his  followers,  say  that  tomorrow  the  new  society 
will  begin:  but  he  gave  an  elaborate  logical  mold  into  which,  in  spite  of  sporadic 
aberrations,  the  economic  development  was  assumed  to  flow.  Cf.  Liebknecht’s 
Karl  Marx,  p.  59. 

3  Manifesto  (London),  1888,  p.  13.  s  Ibid.,  p.  738. 

4  Chaps,  xxiv,  xxv,  esp.  pp.  639  ff.  6  Ibid.,  p.  786. 


28 


INTERACTION  OF  FACT  AND  IDEA 


29 


inevitable  trend?  At  first  glance  it  may  seem  as  if  the  predictions  of 
Marx  and  his  disciples  have  come  to  pass,  and  it  is  true  that  the  acuteness 
of  Marx  as  an  economist  is  proved  by  his  forecast  of  one  line  of  develop¬ 
ment,  for  since  his  death  has  come  the  era  of  great  combinations.  Some 
careful  observers,  however,  have  concluded  that  there  are  counteracting 
currents.1  The  testimony  of  a  socialist  on  this  point  is  relevant.  After 
giving  a  review  of  German  statistics  relating  to  the  growth  in  size  of  indus¬ 
trial  plants,  Bernstein  concludes : 

Notwithstanding  continual  changes  in  industrial  groups  and  in  their  mate¬ 
rial  arrangements,  the  picture  which  presents  itself  to  us  today  does  not  indicate 
that  large  manufacturing  establishments  continually  devour  business  units  of 
small  and  moderate  dimensions,  but  this  picture  simply  shows  large  business 
establishments  growing  up  by  the  side  of  smaller  ones.  It  is  only  those  estab¬ 
lishments  so  small  as  to  be  called  dwarf  establishments  which  are  suffering  an 
absolute  and  relative  decline . 2 

If  modem  society  is  to  break  to  pieces  by  reason  of  the  disappearance  of  the 
middle  classes  between  the  two  extremes  of  the  social  pyramid,  if  this  breaking 
to  pieces  depends  upon  the  absorption  of  these  middle  classes  by  the  extremes  above 
and  below,  then  this  break-up  is  no  nearer  its  realization  than  it  was  in  any  earlier 
period  than  the  nineteenth  century.3 

In  his  admirable  discussion  of  “Concentration  of  Production,”4  Pro¬ 
fessor  Ely  contends  that 

the  size  of  the  business  unit  of  maximum  efficiency  must  depend  upon  the  capacity 
of  the  heads  of  the  business  unit,  upon  the  nature  of  the  particular  business,  and 
upon  the  progress  which,  at  the  given  moment,  has  been  made  in  the  methods 
of  organization.  Whenever  a  business  outgrows  the  capacity  of  one  man  to  main¬ 
tain  unity,  the  danger  point  is  reached.  Men  differ  greatly  in  the  generalship 
required  for  the  management  of  a  vast  business,  and  unity  is  maintained  in  some 
businesses  far  more  easily  than  in  others.  It  is  quite  possible  that  with  a  division 
of  the  railways  of  the  United  States  into  suitable  geographical  areas,  each  with  a 
large  measure  of  autonomy,  a  unified  management  could  in  a  general  way  be 
exercised  over  them  all.  The  size  of  the  business  concern  in  manufacturing 
over  which  unity  can  be  exercised  is,  so  far  as  can  now  be  seen,  much  smaller;  and 
still  smaller  is  the  mercantile  establishment  over  which  unified  control  can  be 
exercised.  Vastly  smaller  in  agriculture  is  the  size  of  the  business  unit  over 
which  unified  control  can  be  exercised.  With  the  change  from  extensive  to  inten- 

1  Bullock,  Quart.  Jour.  Economics,  Vol.  XV,  pp.  167  ff.  For  a  review  of  the 
statistics  relating  to  large-scale  production  sc.  Simkhovitch,  op.  cit.,  pp.  658  ff. 

a  Voraussetzungen  des  Sozialismus  und  die  Aujgaben  der  Sozialdemocratie,  p.  59. 

3  Ibid.,  p.  65.  Cited  in  Ely,  Monopolies  and  Trusts,  pp.  190,  191 

4  Ibid.,  chap.  v. 


30 


DUALISM  OF  FACT  AND  IDEA 


sive  culture  there  is  apparently  a  general  tendency  to  divide  up  large  estates, 
although  it  is  perhaps  true  that  after  this  change  has  once  been  made  there  is 
again  a  very  moderate  movement  in  the  direction  of  larger  farms. 

In  connection  with  the  supposed  tendency  to  “bonanza”  farms  in  the 
United  States  the  students  of  economics  in  the  University  of  Wisconsin  have 
for  years  pursued  investigations,  and  not  one  has  succeeded  in  demonstrating 
any  concentration  in  agricultural  production  so  far  as  area  is  concerned, 
although  one  student  thought  that  there  is  a  trend  toward  greater  average 
values.2 

The  general  conclusion  therefore  seems  to  be  that  industrial  concen¬ 
tration  has  many  hindering  forces,  that  there  is  a  point  of  maximum  effi¬ 
ciency  relative  to  particular  enterprises,  and  that  the  universal  trend  toward 
consolidation  and  monopoly,  however  great  it  may  be  as  one  phase  of 
economic  change,  has  not  corresponded  with  the  early  logical  statement. 

Similar  observation  may  be  made  on  the  doctrine  of  increasing  misery.3 
The  original  formulation  based  itself  in  part  on  a  version  of  the  iron  law 
of  wages,  according  to  which  the  worker  is  treated  as  a  commodity  whose 
labor-power  is  bought  and  sold  in  the  cheapest  market  by  the  exploiting 
capitalist:  he  is  paid  enough  to  keep  his  physical  forces  intact  and  to 
support  a  family  in  order  that  his  children  may  continue  the  regime  of 
confiscating  surplus  value.4  Laws  and  institutions  made  by  capitalistic 
masters  hedge  him  in  more  and  more,  and,  in  the  midst  of  accumulating 
social  wealth  stolen  by  private  interests,  his  state,  by  logical  antithesis, 
increases  in  precariousness  and  poverty. 

It  is  not  now  held  even  by  the  socialists  that  such  is  irretrievably  the 
case.  Historians  of  popular  movements  note  the  fact  that  periods  of  protest 
are  not  times  of  direst  poverty,  but  times  of  comparative  prosperity,  intelli¬ 
gence,  and  keen  comparison  of  the  status  of  classes.5  There  is  a  general 
recognition  that  at  least  no  such  clean-cut  formulation  as  Marx  and  George 
gave  to  the  matter  is  tenable,6  even  though  one  is  keenly  alive  to  undoubted 
maladjustments  and  inequalities,  and  to  the  well-known  fact  that  the 
burden  of  our  economic  system  presses  most  heavily  upon  those  least  able 

*  Op.  cit .,  pp.  194,  195. 

2  Op.  cit.,  p.  193;  cf.  Sombart,  Socialism,  p.  159;  Thompson,  Constructive  Pro¬ 
gram  0}  Socialism,  pp.  63  ff.;  Capital,  pp.  512  ff. 

3  Manifesto,  p.  13. 

4  Capital,  pp.  627  ff. 

5  Rogers,  Economic  Interpretation  of  History,  p.  81. 

6  Cf.  Jaures,  Studies  in  Socialism,  p.  161;  Ashley,  Progress  of  the  German  Working 
Classes,  p.  140. 


INTERACTION  OF  FACT  AND  IDEA 


31 


to  bear  it.  A  recent  investigation  of  the  material  prosperity  of  the  work¬ 
ing  class  in  the  United  States,  published  in  Adams  and  Sumner’s  Labor 
Problems,'1  comes  to  this  general  conclusion: 

While  the  data  upon  this  subject  are  imperfect  and  tentative,  they  establish 
a  strong  probability  that  the  proportion  of  wealth  in  the  hands  of  the  wealthy 
is  astonishingly,  if  not  alarmingly,  great;  but  they  also  indicate  with  less  certainty 
that  the  distribution  of  wealth  is  becoming  less,  rather  than  more,  unequal.2 

In  the  course  of  the  study,  the  following  points  are  indicative  of  the 
complexity  of  the  problem  and  the  futility  of  dogmatic  assertion:  (a)  It 
is  extremely  difficult  to  estimate  at  different  historical  periods  the  amount 
of  real,  as  compared  with  nominal,  wages,  and  the  comparative  standards  of 
life,  (b)  It  is  fairly  evident  that  in  the  last  hundred  years  wages  have 
increased,  hours  of  work  diminished,  sanitation  improved,  and  a  general  dis¬ 
tribution  been  made  of  articles  of  dress  and  household  conveniences  such  as 
the  mediaeval  nobility  would  have  envied.  ( c )  But  the  strain  of  “  speed¬ 
ing  up”  of  the  machine  has  intensified,  accidents  have  multiplied,  and 
mental  and  nervous  diseases  show  the  inability  of  men  racially  inured  to 
hunting  and  outdoor  activities  to  adjust  themselves  to  a  “high  gear” 
standardized  civilization.  ( d )  It  is  demonstrated  that  concentration  of 
wealth  may  be  coincident  with  a  wide  distribution  of  goods  to  the  wage¬ 
earning  groups. 

All  in  all,  the  question  is  not  one  which  lends  itself  easily  to  hasty 
judgment  or  prediction  of  certain  future  tendencies;  it  demands  patient, 
continued  study  and  judicious  application  of  remedial  measures. 

The  early  socialist  view  of  the  modern  state  illustrates  a  character¬ 
istic  painting  in  bold  colors  which  allow  insufficient  room  for  delicate 
light  and  shade;  as  usual,  the  Marxian  indictment  contains  partial  truth 
needing  qualification  and  enlargement.  Here  again  there  has  been  a 
gradual  change  of  attitude:  the  early  era  of  hostility  and  no  compromise 
with  the  industrial  masters  has  merged  into  one  accompanied  by  greater 
willingness  to  detect,  in  the  midst  of  undoubted  opposition  of  interest 
between  “capitalistic”  politics  and  “proletarian”  aspirations,  some  positive 
co-operative  aspects  in  the  already  organized  system.3  This  attitude  is 
said  to  be  not  only  perceptible  among  the  “revisionists,”  but  to  be  notice¬ 
able  also  among  the  orthodox  Marxians,  as  shown  by  recent  attention  to 

1  Chap.  xiii. 

2  Ibid.,  p.  535. 

3  Kampffmeyer,  Changes  in  the  Theory  and  Tactics  0}  the  Social  Democracy 
(Chicago,  1908),  pp.  24  ff;  Jaures,  op.  cit.  p.  33. 


32 


DUALISM  OF  FACT  AND  IDEA 


the  claims  of  militarism  and  national  patriotism:  the  Manifesto  declared 
the  workers  to  be  an  international  brotherhood  and  without  a  country.1 

It  is  proposed  in  the  following  discussion  to  state  the  position  of  Marx 
in  relation  to  the  conditions  out  of  which  it  emerged  and  to  emphasize,  in 
the  light  of  advancing  needs,  the  limitations  of  the  extreme  socialist  view 
generated  by  German  surroundings,  as  well  as  the  limitations  of  the  extreme 
individualism  characteristic  of  the  “American  spirit.”  Marx  considered 
the  political  system  in  which  he  was  born  and  persecuted2  a  close  corpora¬ 
tion,  selfishly  managed  in  the  interest  of  semi-feudal  landlords  and  corrupt 
bourgeoisie ,  and  pursuing  belligerent,  military  methods  in  war  and  industry. 
The  state  was  an  arbitrary  concern  exploiting  weaker  peoples  for  its  eco¬ 
nomic  advantage  and  employing  its  norm,  its  laws,  its  police,  to  repress 
the  legitimate  demands  of  the  workers.3  All  the  professions,  the  “intel¬ 
lectuals,”  were  parasitic  growths,  drawing  sustenance  by  observing  and 
propagating  the  “ruling  ideas”  which  emanated  from  basal  economic  inter¬ 
ests.4  Under  the  pressure  of  self-preservation,  the  state  sanctioned  predatory 
practices  in  industry,  the  rights  of  private  property  and  anti-social  accumu¬ 
lation,  and,  as  in  all  wars  of  conquest,  was  careless  of  human  life,  unless 
its  interests  were  endangered  by  failure  to  attend  to  the  urging  of  humani¬ 
tarian  motives.  Against  the  artificiality  of  the  capitalist  political  organiza¬ 
tion,  he  sets  the  synthetic  state  of  socialism.  War,  national  patriotism,  class 
virtue,  and  predatory  conquest  abroad  and  at  home  will  be  eliminated  when 
the  economic  conditions  calling  out  anti-social  conduct  are  removed.  Private 
property  in  the  means  of  production — which  are,  antithetically,  even  now 
social  and  co-operative  in  their  internal  organization — is  the  substantial 
basis  of  the  higher  life  of  the  bourgeoisie ;  with  the  destruction  of  exploita¬ 
tion,  the  function  of  priest,  lawyer,  soldier,  and  “ideological”  philosopher 

1  Cf.  Kampffmeyer,  op.  cit.,  chap,  iii;  Veblen,  Quart.  Jour.  Economics,  Vol.  XXI, 
pp.  319  ff. 

2  A  good  narration  of  his  career  is  found  in  Rae,  Contemporary  Socialism,  chap.  iv. 

3  Manifesto,  p.  9. 

4  The  corollary  of  the  original  Marx-Engels  position  is  to  welcome  misery  and  dis¬ 
asters  of  the  “contradictory”  capitalist  system,  agitate,  and  wait  for  its  dissolution; 
suffrage  and  parliamentary  representatives  can  do  little;  the  theory  and  tactics  have 
gradually  come  around  to  the  position  that  the  democratizing  and  socializing  of  the 
present  order  can  be  brought  about  by  means  of  cautious  reform  activity  of  the  working 
class  through  divers  means:  it  is  not  necessary  for  capitalistic  contradictions  to  become 
acute  that  a  spontaneous  explosion  may  occur.  This  is  in  part  a  return  to,  in  part  an 
advance  over,  Lassalle’s  view  of  the  creative  and  transitional  function  of  the  state. 
Cf.  Kampffmeyer,  op.  cit.,  p.  11;  for  the  oscillations  and  opposition  of  opinion  and 
practice  in  such  leaders  as  Bebel,  Liebknecht,  Kautsky,  and  Von  Vollmar;  sc.,  op. 
cit.,  chap.  i. 


1 


INTERACTION  OF  FACT  AND  IDEA 


33 


will  disappear,  since  all  the  professions  are  in  one  way  or  another  sub¬ 
servient  to  an  essentially  vicious  system.  The  future  political  organiza¬ 
tion  will  be,  not  a  state,  but  a  civil  society,1  an  industrial  copartnership, 
managing  and  distributing  economic  resources,  and,  presumably,  foster¬ 
ing  the  requisite  psychological  and  moral  attitudes  which  thoroughgoing 
co-operation  will  engender.  The  military  and  predatory  controlling 
machinery  of  the  bourgeoisie  will  vanish;  expropriators  will  be  expropri¬ 
ated,  and  all  who  are  now  divided  into  “proletariat”  and  “bourgeoisie” 
will  be  forced  to  a  standard  of  labor,  of  service  rendered  to  society. 

To  secure  perspective  for  his  view  one  should  call  to  mind  the  influence 
upon  Marx  of  the  French  radicals,2  the  transforming  of  Hegelian  idealism 
into  the  “humanism”  of  Feuerbach,  and  the  reaction  of  his  impetuous 
Hebrew  nature  against  the  Prussian  administrative  system.  The  “set” 
given  by  the  Hohenzollerns  toward  benevolent  despotism,  restriction  of 
free  thought,  and  political  participation,  was  distasteful  to  him,  and  the 
halting  reforms  initiated  by  Stein  would  not  satisfy  those  who  had  felt  the 
European  revolutionary  impetus.  Moreover,  there  was  the  dawning 
economic  revolution  in  Germany  attended  by  a  vast  increase  of  wealth, 
which  Marx  considered  drained  from  peasant  and  factory  laborer,  concen¬ 
trated  in  an  idle  aristocracy  and  in  harsh  official  hands,  and  used  to  support 
the  hierarchy  and  the  standing  army. 

Hegel,  to  some  extent,  served  to  give  philosophical  idealization  to  this 
situation.  He  praised  the  prince3  and  the  constitutional  monarchy, 
treated  war  as  an  ethical  necessity4  (the  stage  of  antithesis),  explained  the 
rationality  of  the  stratification  of  classes,5  and  discountenanced  public 
opinion  as  a  vague  chaotic  imitation  of  the  unification  of  reason  in  the 
reflective  and  ruling  members  of  the  state.6  The  value  of  his  emphasis 
upon  finding  one’s  freedom  in  the  organic  state  and  the  sanity  of  his  judg¬ 
ment  and  historical  insight  are  not  the  points  in  question:  he  was  a  son  of 
his  own  time,  as  he  admitted. 

These  characteristics  of  the  political  system — its  military  basis,  its 
boast  to  do  good  for  the  people,  its  grudging  vouchsafing  of  “rights,”  its 
Platonic  class  division,  its  surveillance  of  press  and  university,  its  indis¬ 
position  to  recognize  the  contributions  of  all  members  of  the  community — 
drove  Marx  to  the  extreme  of  not  expecting  any  good  from  the  semi-feudal 
capitalistic  structure  of  his  time.  And  the  flavor  of  charity  in  the  upper 

*  Rae,  op.  cit.,  p.  141. 

2  Cf.  Wundt,  Ethik ,  Vol.  I,  pp.  507  ff. 

3  Philosophy  0}  Right,  p.  283. 

4  Ibid.,  p.  332. 


s  Ibid.,  p.  275. 
6  Ibid.,  p.  322. 


34 


DUALISM  OF  FACT  AND  IDEA 


circles,  of  granting  favors,  of  conferring  old-age  pensions  and  industrial 
insurance,  is  the  reason  why  the  strict  socialists  will  not  admit  that  the 
public  ownership  of  railways  and  assumed  devotion  to  the  poor  is  genuine 
socialization.  The  state  socialism  of  Bismarck1  proceeds,  in  their  opinion, 
on  the  assumption  that  reform  can  only  come  from  the  top,  from  the  pro¬ 
fessional  thinker  and  administrators,  whereas  the  socialist  idea  is  that  the 
new  society  must  build  from  the  bottom — must  be  an  achievement  won 
by  immanent  forces  working  out  in  the  “proletariat.”2 

In  the  insistence  that  the  state  after  all  must  be  an  organized  expression 
of  general  co-operation  the  Marxian  socialists  are  undoubtedly  right, 
but  in  refusing  to  admit  the  positive  and  sympathetic  motives  existing  in 
the  present  state,  they  are  undoubtedly  declining  to  see  “facts”  which 
belie  their  theory.  The  present  state  is  both  quasi-military  and  co-opera¬ 
tive.  It  is  true  that  an  emergency,  such  as  a  revision  of  the  tariff,  calls 
out  the  industrial  warriors,  each  calling  for  “protection”  irrespective 
of  the  common  good,  and  it  is  true  that  there  is  “exploitation”  in  public, 
as  well  as  in  private,  business.  But  there  are  also  social  impulses  working 
in  both ;  and  the  problem  really  vital  is  to  find  ways  and  means  to  facilitate 
such  sympathetic  activity.  The  fallacy  of  the  socialist  is  to  suppose  that 
the  social  attitude  is  present  in  the  bottom  sections  only  of  the  social  pyra¬ 
mid;  that  of  the  elite  is  to  assume  that  no  contribution  can  come  from  the 
irresponsible  “people.” 

A  further  consideration  to  be  noted  is  that  even  if  we  grant  the  predatory 
basis  of  capitalistic  political  organization,  one  means  of  changing  its  char¬ 
acter  to  that  of  co-operation  is  by  continually  increasing  its  sphere  and 
eliciting  responsibility  and  the  social  attitude,  even  at  the  cost  of  some 
preliminary  failure.3  The  situation  in  America  illustrates  this  side  of 
the  problem.  Instead  of  starting  out  on  the  continental  theory  that  govern¬ 
ment  should  work  for  the  non-effective  people,  America,  reacting  against 
England,  took  the  stand  that  government  was  in  its  essence  a  necessary  evil 

1  Cf.  Dawson,  Bismarck  and  State  Socialism,  chap.  iii. 

2  The  Manifesto  claimed  that  the  protelariat  was  the  only  revolutionary  class; 
recent  socialist  opinion  denies  this  (Thompson,  Constructive  Program  of  Socialism,  p.  9). 

3  “To  be  afraid  to  extend  the  functions  of  government  may  be  to  lose  what  we  have. 
A  government  has  always  received  feeble  support  from  its  constituents  as  soon  as  its 
demands  appeared  childish  or  remote.  Citizens  inevitably  neglect  or  abandon  civic 
duty,  when  their  government  no  longer  embodies  their  genuine  desires.” — Jane 
Addams,  Newer  Ideals  of  Peace,  pp.  112,  113.  Professor  Ely  insists  upon  the  truth 
that  additional  responsibility  calls  out  devotion  to  the  common  good  and  greater 
efficiency.  This  he  forcibly  applies  to  the  problem  of  municipal  ownership  of 
public  utilities. 


INTERACTION  OF  FACT  AND  IDEA 


35 


and  should  be  restricted  to  narrow  “police  functions.”1  Our  extensions 
of  constitutional  powers  have  always  been  excused  on  the  score  that  each 
extension  was  “implied”  in  the  original  demarkation.  It  is  a  well-known 
fact  that  today  any  assumption  of  new  responsibilities  is  decried  because  it 
transgresses  “freedom.”  Such  freedom  is  found  on  examination  to  mean 
freedom  from  such  oppressive  government  as  George  III  typifies,  and  which 
colored  the  views  of  our  political  builders.  The  individualistic  critics  of 
this  persuasion  forget  that  practically  we  have  long  outgrown  the  early 
conception,  and  notwithstanding  the  anti-social  element  still  present  in 
our  political  system,  the  beneficent  activities  centering  in  our  national  and 
state  capitols  and  city  halls  bear  witness  to  the  fact  that  government  is 
also  social,  educational,  and  ethical.  The  problem  of  the  enlargement 
of  governmental  activities  is  not  correctly  stated,  therefore,  if  we  ask: 
Shall  we  put  additional  duties  upon  a  state,  which  is  to  perform  benevolent 
services  for  the  people  whether  they  co-operate  or  not  (as  in  Germany)  ? 
Neither  should  we  ask:  Shall  we  give  up  our  “liberties”  and  add  to  legiti¬ 
mate  police  functions  of  government  the  control  of  health  or  industry,  for 
example  (the  conventional  American  way)  ?  Both  statements  of  the  ques¬ 
tion  ignore  the  vital  fact  that  the  positive  co-operative  state  is  here,  because 
social  impulses  are  already  operating  in  so  far  as  people  live  a  community  life, 
and  that  the  real  problem,  again,  is  to  find  more  fruitful  outlet  for  capacities 
now  existing:  this  may  mean  a  giving-up  of  honored  state  activities.  The 
individualist,  who  objects  to  social  control  because  he  imagines  he  is  sacri¬ 
ficing  freedom,  attains  a  further  lessening  of  real  freedom  because  he  has 
thrown  away  the  necessary  mechanism  and  laws  through  which  freedom 
is  attained.  Conversely,  the  socialist  who  shuns  the  corrupt  capitalistic 
state  is  throwing  away  the  only  obvious  means  of  attaining  a  possible  co-oper¬ 
ative  commonwealth,  and  has  to  console  himself  by  recourse  to  a  predeter¬ 
mined  economic  evolution.  Says  Jane  Addams: 

While  the  state  spends  millions  of  dollars  and  employs  thousands  of  servants 
to  nurture  and  heal  the  sick  and  defective,  it  steadfastly  refuses  to  extend  its 
kindness  to  the  normal  working  man.  The  socialists  alone  constantly  appeal 
for  this  extension.  They  refuse,  however,  to  deal  with  the  present  State,  and 
constantly  take  refuge  in  the  formulae  of  a  new  Scholasticism.  Their  orators 
are  busily  engaged  in  establishing  two  substitutes  for  human  nature  which  they 
call  “proletarian”  and  “capitalist.”  They  ignore  the  fact  that  varying,  imperfect 
human  nature  is  incalculable,  and  that  to  eliminate  its  varied  and  constantly 

1  Cf.  a  fine  characterization  of  the  weakness  of  the  individualistic  notion,  and  the 
possibilities  of  an  investigatory,  deliberative,  and  constructive  governmental  organi¬ 
zation  when  society  becomes  conscious  of  itself,  in  Ward,  Psychic  Factors  in  Civiliza¬ 
tion,  pp.  319  ff. 


36 


DUALISM  OF  FACT  AND  IDEA 


changing  elements  is  to  face  all  the  mistakes  and  miscalculations  which  gather 
around  the  “fallen  man”  or  the  “economic  man”  or  any  other  of  the  fixed  norms 
which  have  from  time  to  time  been  substituted  for  expanding  and  developing 
human  life.  In  time  “the  proletarian”  and  “the  capitalist”  will  become  the 
impedimenta  which  it  will  be  necessary  to  clear  away  in  order  to  make  room  for 
the  mass  of  living  and  breathing  citizens  with  whom  self-government  must 
eventually  deal.1 

The  history  of  factory  legislation,  public  control  of  natural  monopolies, 
public  care  of  dependent  and  defective,  public  education,  old-age  pensions, 
and  the  thousand  remedial  devices  proceeding  in  part  at  least  from  active 
popular  demand  does  not  substantiate  either  the  early  plea  of  Spencerian 
individualism,  or  the  socialistic  opposition  to  the  “patchwork”  concessions 
of  a  predatory  bourgeois  state.  Certainly  the  state  has  not  yet  come  to 
consciousness  of  its  positive  function,  yet  there  is  no  need  of  minimizing  the 
ultimate  validity  of  present  extensions  of  its  activity  and  of  assuming  either 
that  they  transgress  original  natural  rights  and  eternal  limits  of  the  political 
sphere,  or  that  they  are  merely  anticipatory  regulations  preparing  for  a 
N?w  Jerusalem  whose  structure  and  functions  are  now  known  in  detail. 
Either  position  is  a  patent  example  of  the  extreme  empirical  and  rationalistic 
fallacy  of  trying  to  derive  the  meaning  of  immediate  conditions  outside  the 
process  of  solving  the  present  problem,  of  resting  upon  chosen  “facts” 
or  given  £< ideas.” 

The  reaction  of  evolving  experience  upon  old  concepts  illustrated  above 
by  the  complexities  of  industrial  concentration,  distribution  of  economic 
and  social  goods  to  the  masses,  and  functions  of  government  serves  to  show 
the  emptiness  of  logical  formulation  in  advance  of  the  changing  conditions, 
and  enforces  once  more  the  prime  necessity  of  a  persistent  restatement  of 
the  problem. 

1  Newer  Ideals  0}  Peace ,  p.  86.  (Italics  mine.) 


V.  TRANSITION  FROM  THE  HEGELIAN-MARXIAN  THEORY 

TO  RECENT  OPPORTUNISM 


It  will  make  for  definiteness  to  give  a  schematic  summary  of  the  general 
transition  from  the  early  logical  method  to  the  later,  together  with  further 
evidences  of  the  reconstruction  of  doctrine  by  the  “  revisionists.” 

1.  The  Hegelian  system  was  formulated  under  the  influence  of  roman¬ 
ticism,  continental  liking  for  systematization,  an  immature  science,  and 
dawning  interest  in  social  evolution.  Hegel  advocated  an  immanent, 
Absolute  Teleology;  his  advance  was  a  firm  grasp  of  the  process  of  friction, 
of  antithesis,  of  unfolding  of  meaning  implicit  in  the  elements  constituting 
a  problem;  his  defect,  a  failure  to  connect  the  dialectic  of  reason  with  a 
workable  application  of  hardly  won  truth  to  immediate,  practical  ends, 
and  a  consequent  idealization  of  already  attained  valuations.  To  offset 
his  logic  of  the  Idea  and  his  minimizing  of  the  democratizing  value  of  new 
facts  and  scientific  invention,  the  Left  reduced  the  march  of  history  to 
material  fact  and  economic  evolution  determined  by  invention,  i.  e.,  the 
“tools,”  the  technique  of  production.  It  retained,  however,  the  logical 
inevitableness  and  consistency  characteristic  of  the  rationalistic  animus, 
and,  to  match  the  exaggerated  claims  of  the  possessors  of  reason,  the 
“professional”  estates,  magnified  the  counterclaims  of  the  dependent  occu¬ 
pational  classes,  the  “proletariat.”  The  Marxian  theory  is  at  once  fatal¬ 
istic  and  revolutionary;  it  assumes  an  unchanging  validity  in  its  catego¬ 
ries — the  materialistic  interpretation  of  history,  the  class  struggle,  surplus 
value,  inevitable  exploitation,  and  ultimate  victory  of  the  proletariat.  What¬ 
ever  present  contradictions  appear  are  explained  away  after  the  rational¬ 
istic  manner:  they  are  “appearances,”  “illusions,”  in  no  wise  affecting  the 
real  trend. 

2.  The  next  stage  in  the  development  of  method  shows  the  influence 
of  exact  scientific  research  and  an  appreciation  of  its  tentative  procedure.1 
The  students  of  primitive  life  do  not  obtain  indubitable  evidence  of  any 
inevitable  and  predetermined  drift.  Although  it  may  be  said  that  Hegel 
stated  in  abstract  phraseology  the  general  process  of  the  origin  of  species, 

1  No  caution  is  needed  that  a  sharp  line  cannot  be  drawn.  The  Marxian  of  today 
is  the  “revisionist”  of  tomorrow:  and  conservative  revisionist  becomes  an  “impossi- 
bilist”  the  day  after.  Leaders,  e.  g.,  Liebknecht,  are  combinations  of  not  altogether 
compatible  attitudes,  like  all  statesmen  forced  to  compromise. 


37 


38 


DUALISM  OF  FACT  AND  IDEA 


yet  his  Absolute  Teleology  is  not  reconcilable  with  a  cumulative  impact  of 
environment,  a  mechanical  sequence  of  cause  and  effect  and  a  more  or  less 
blind  selective  agency  of  nature.1  In  so  far  as  this  mode  of  thought  is 
invoked  to  explain  social  growth  a  confession  of  inability  to  state  the  matter 
in  strict  logical  and  teleological  terms  follows.  Geographical  and  climatic 
peculiarities,  racial  endowment,  heredity,  occupation,  “psychical  tradition,” 
and  a  hundred  other  factors  must  be  taken  into  account;  there  can  be 
no  rigid  determination  by  inevitable  economic  forces  in  a  foreseen  direction 
simply  because  the  economic  is  an  abstraction  from  a  complex  of  mutually 
conditioning  forces  in  a  particular  social  group.  By  no  straining  can  the 
Marxian  doctrine  be  made  to  harmonize;  it  is  true  that  the  socialists  wel¬ 
come  biological  and  anthropological  literature  because  it  appears  on  the 
surface  to  confirm  their  doctrines,  but  in  so  far  as  the  logic  of  the  scientific 
method  is  grasped  they  modify  their  original  assumptions.2  The  attempt 
of  Kautsky  (a strict  Marxian),  for  example,  to  find  support  for  the  doctrine 
of  periodic  revolution  from  De  Vries’  mutation  hypothesis  is  more  ingen¬ 
ious  than  convincing.3  It  is  evident  that  the  utilitarian  and  empirical 
element  of  the  Marxian  system  is  most  adapted  to  welcome  the  mechanical 
view  of  the  scientists,  but  in  so  far  as  the  amalgamation  takes  place,  the 
logical,  teleological,  and  inevitable  drawn  from  Hegelian  sources  is  dropped, 
and  the  initial  concepts  so  attenuated  as  to  be  hardly  recognizable.  The 
cleavage  within  the  socialist  ranks  between  orthodox  Marxian  or  “impos- 
sibilist,”  and  “opportunist”  or  revisionist,  is  due  to  the  influence  of  scientific 
investigation,  in  conjunction  with  the  vast  difference  in  the  conditions  with 
which  the  socialists  must  cope  when  they  start  to  work  out  their  problems 
in  the  various  countries  of  the  world.4 

3.  The  third  step  in  the  conception  of  method  owes  its  origin  to  more 
recent  contributions  of  biology  and  psychology.  Even  in  early  forms  of 
life  there  is  an  “accommodation”  and  active  “attitude”  which  selects 
just  what  response  to  make  to  stimuli;  and  in  psychology,  the  frequency 
of  the  words  “function,”  “attention,”  and  “concrete  end”  is  indicative 
of  the  dynamic  and  reconstructive  nature  of  consciousness.  How  this 

1  Cf.  Ritchie,  Darwin  and  Hegel ,  p.  56. 

2  Cf.  Dietzgen,  Philosophical  Essays,  pp.  314  ff. 

3  Kautsky,  The  Social  Revolution,  p.  16. 

4  On  the  revisionists  sc.  Bernstein,  V  orausetzungen  des  Socialismus  and  Zur. 
Geschichte  und  Theorie  des  Socialismus;  Jaures,  op.  cit.,  chap,  xiii;  Kampffmeyer, 
op.  cit.,  passim;  Brooks,  The  Social  Unrest,  pp.  309  ff.;  Ensor,  Modern  Socialism,  esp. 
Introduction;  Hobson,  The  Social  Problem;  Spargo,  Socialism;  Sombart,  Socialism 
and  the  Social  Movement,  esp.  chap,  iv;  Ashley,  Progress  of  the  German  Working 
Classes,  pp.  139  ff.;  Hobhouse,  Democracy  and  Reaction,  pp.  217  ff. 


FROM  HEGELIAN-MARXIAN  THEORY  TO  OPPORTUNISM  39 

view  affects  the  theory  of  logical  method  has  been  suggested  in  the  intro¬ 
ductory  section.  It  may  pertinently  be  reasserted  that,  in  contrast  with  the 
former  views,  the  instrumentalist  attitude  does  not  admit  either  a  fixed 
teleology  or  a  fixed  mechanical  sequence,  a  fixed  unchanging  purpose  or 
equally  unchanging  facts.  In  any  definite  problem  the  facts  are  necessary 
means  to  the  end  and  called  for  by  the  problem.  The  instrumentalist 
is  satisfied  with  a  method  which  can  preserve  a  teleology  implicit  in  daily 
experience,  a  method  of  immediate  control  and  constant  attainment  of 
purpose.  One  may  say,  therefore,  that  he  possesses  a  working  theory 
which  is  not  liable  to  the  weakness  of  Hegelian-Marxian  Absolutism — 
that  of  dissipating  attention  from  the  next  thing  to  be  done.  Neither  is 
it  liable  to  the  infirmity  of  an  exclusive  devotion  to  chosen  facts.  Admission 
must  instantly  be  made,  however,  that  some  revisionists  are  fully  alive  to 
the  implications  of  the  experimental  method;  and  no  statement  of  the 
evolution  of  the  theory  and  practice  of  social  reform  would  be  adequate 
without  considering  some  of  the  many  modifications  achieved  by  them. 
The  following  are  representative:1 

1.  They  rebuke  a  worship  of  Marx,  Engels,  or  any  socialist  document, 
claiming  that  the  best  disciple  is  the  expander  of  the  doctrine. 

2.  They  evince  an  enthusiasm  and  belief  in  the  permanent  value  of 
reforms  less  ambitious  than  a  complete  overhauling  of  the  whole  social 
edifice.  The  questions  of  milk  supply,  tuberculosis,  municipal  ownership, 
the  referendum,  public  parks,  industrial  education,  and  a  score  of  others 
are  treated  on  their  merits;  significant,  too,  is  the  favorable  attitude  to 
co-operative  experiments  and  trade  unions.  Certainly  the  socialist  plat¬ 
forms  have  always  contained  “immediate  demands;”  the  basal  change  is 
an  assertion  of  the  real  worth  in  themselves  of  the  remedial  measures, 
not  simply  as  a  preparation  for  a  future  regime.  In  fact,  there  is  consider¬ 
able  hesitancy  to  venture  any  predictions  of  what  society  is  to  be,  or  to  set  up 
definite  criteria  of  distributive  justice. 

3.  They  do  not  propose  to  convert  all  the  means  of  production  and 
distribution  into  common  ownership.  Those  sufficiently  developed  and 
concentrated  to  be  used  in  common,  those  which  are  monopolistic,  and 
found  by  experience  to  be  dangerous  if  privately  owned,  are  the  chosen 
candidates  for  public  ownership.  They  do  not  wish  to  destroy  private 
industry  or  initiative.  What  they  insist  upon  is  not  centralization  as  an 
end  per  se  but  economical  management  and  just  distribution.  Voluntary 
local  enterprises  are  advocated. 

1  Cf.  Thompson,  Constructive  Program,  chap,  i;  Jaures,  op.  cit.,  chap,  xiii;  Kampff- 
meyer,  op.  cit.,  passim. 


40 


DUALISM  OF  FACT  AND  IDEA 


4.  Not  revolution,  but  evolution,  is  the  recent  cry.  The  belligerency 
of  the  class-struggle  doctrine  is  materially  softened,  and  there  is  a  recogni¬ 
tion  of  the  fact  that  socialism  is  not  limited  to  wage-earners.  The  “intel¬ 
lectuals”  are  notdooked  upon  with  suspicion. 

5.  They  admit  that  each  nation  has  its  appropriate  type  of  socialist 
movement.  In  democratic  countries  with  legislative  bodies  and  pro¬ 
portional  representation,  socialism  must  adopt  theories  and  programmes 
radically  different  from  those  fitted  to  monarchial  and  partly  feudal  societies. 

6.  While  protesting  against  an  uncritical  eulogy  of  “love”  as  a  solvent 
of  social  ills,  they  transcend  the  cynical  Marxian  version  of  innate  depravity 
by  insisting  upon  the  essential  goodness  of  human  instincts  and  the  possi¬ 
bility  of  making  adverse  economic  conditions  a  stimulus  to  moral  activity 
now A 

The  list  could  be  extended  indefinitely;  it  is  enough  to  indicate  that  a 
folk  movement  constituting  the  storm  center  of  popular  aspiration  has 
passed  through  its  utopian  and  dogmatic  childhood  to  constructive  maturity: 
it  is  dynamic  and  progressive. 

It  has  already  been  intimated  that  a  consideration  of  the  socialist 
standpoint  in  its  numerous  mutations  is  important  because  it  presents  in 
sharply  drawn  outline  the  direction  toward  which  social  movement  seems 
to  be  hurrying,  from  the  standpoint  of  those  who  hitherto  have  not  been 
heard  distinctly.2  From  any  angle  it  is  extremely  suggestive  that  a  groping 
popular  protest  should  take  its  rise  from  the  structure  of  a  philosophical 
system  summing  up  a  long  period  of  idealistic  reflection,  and  that  it  should 
attempt  to  incorporate  the  findings  of  modern  evolutionary  science  into 
its  rationalistic  framework.  That  the  Fourth  Estate  should  arrive  at  a 
world-view  is  a  conquest,  irrespective  of  the  tenability  of  its  doctrines; 
and  that  daily  work  should  be  regarded  as  the  going-out  point  of  political, 
ethical,  and  religious  values  is  prophetic  of  the  time  when  society  shall 
become  so  conscious  of  human  values  that  it  can  patiently  survey  all  its 
“facts,”  however  uncomfortable,  and  formulate  its  constructive  measures 
without  the  omission  of  one  factor  essential  to  the  solution  of  its  problem. 
Just  as  Hegel  presented  a  world-view  from  the  standpoint  of  the  “idea” 

1  In  this  there  is  a  return  to  the  point  of  view  of  the  Utopians  as  well  as  to  that 
stream  of  socialistic  tendency  initiated  by  Maurice  and  Kingsley  and  continued  with 
modifications,  by  Ruskin,  Morris,  and  others  whose  interest  is  ethical  and  artistic. 
It  should  be  noted  that,  in  this  discussion,  the  stress  is  laid  on  the  really  basal  social¬ 
ism,  Marxism,  and  its  deflections. 

2  Ritchie  and  Brooks  assert  that  the  logical  goal  of  Trade  Unionism  is  socialism. 
Observers  hostile  to  socialism  admit  that  the  logic  underlying  lesser  devices  of  social 
amelioration  has  some  likeness  to  the  various  species  of  socialistic  thought. 


FROM  HEGELIAN-MARXIAN  THEORY  TO  OPPORTUNISM  41 


and  the  reflective  and  protected  “profession,”  and  as  Marx  gave  his  message 
of  the  “fact”  and  the  proletarian  “occupation,”  so  may  a  self-conscious 
society  be  willing  to  use  both  contributions  as  means  to  the  enlargement 
and  deepening  of  the  common  life  which  progressively  comprehends  and 
synthesizes  all  interests  however  apparently  irreconcilable.  The  Hegelian- 
Marxian  teleology  stripped  of  its  metaphysical  bias,  emphasizes  the  neces¬ 
sity  of  hypotheses,  predicates,  constructive  plans,  which  shall  be  compre¬ 
hensive  and  universal,  and  the  Utilitarian  counting  of  sensational  “points” 
asserts  the  futility  of  leaving  out  any  vital  fact. 

Modern  sociology  has  arisen  from  an  awareness  of  this  double  need, 
and  the  part  which  the  socialist  philosophy  has  played  as  a  stimulus  to  its 
development  has  often  been  discussed.1  Sociology  attempts  to  supply  a 
philosophical  background,  a  generalized  view  of  the  social  process,  and  at 
the  same  time  to  construct  a  “social  technology”  which  utilizes  all  the 
evidence  drawn  from  whatever  source.  It  combines  devotion  to  the  “fact” 
with  attention  to  constructive  purposes.  It  is  necessary  at  this  juncture  to 
show  how  the  attempted  solution  of  any  social  problem  involves  the  elements 
of  the  socialist  philosophy,  and  to  show,  from  the  sociological  point  of  view, 
what  diverse  interpretations  and  reconstructions  may  be  made  of  so-called 
immutable  “facts”  and  unchanging  “ideas.” 

1  Small  and  Vincent,  Introduction  to  the  Study  of  Society ,  chap.  ii. 


VI.  LOGICAL  METHOD  AS  EMPLOYED  IN  RECENT 
SOLUTIONS  OF  SOCIAL  PROBLEMS 

The  object  of  this  section  is  to  treat  three  examples  of  the  employ¬ 
ment  of  the  constructive  method  of  social  reformation:  (i)  the  trade 
agreement;  (2)  the  consumers’  label,  and  (3)  the  social  settlement.  In 
the  case  of  each  we  shall  consider  the  elements  of  the  “objective  situation,” 
whether  practical  or  theoretical,  which  set  the  problem,  and  the  results 
secured  by  its  technique  of  securing  equilibrium. 

1.  The  conditions  producing  the  trade-union  movement  are  familiar. 
In  general,  these  conditions  go  back  to  one  cause,  the  existence  of  the  wage 
system  made  necessary  by  the  age  of  machinery.  The  effects  of  the  wage 
system  with  its  minute  division  of  the  industrial  processes  are  as  follows: 
(a)  a  precariousness  of  “tenure  of  office”  on  the  part  of  both  employer 
and  employee  due  to  competition  and  shifting  of  demand;  ( b )  a  consequent 
subjection,  especially  of  the  workingman,  to  impersonal  economic  forces; 
(c)  an  inequality  in  relative  power  of  enforcing  claims  arising  from  wages 
or  conditions  of  work;  ( d )  a  necessary  division  of  status.  In  general,  the 
workingman  feels  that  he  is  destined  to  belong  to  his  “class”  during  his 
whole  life;1  ( e )  a  difference  of  psychological  attitude  between  master  and 
man,  that  of  the  former  being  individualistic,  that  of  the  latter,  collectiv- 
istic;  (/)  a  disposition  on  the  part  of  the  worker  to  demand  a  progressive 
raising  of  his  standard  of  living. 

It  is  the  peculiarity  of  modern  economic  processes  that  they  underly 
and  condition  all  our  realizable  values.  One  can  state  this  without  assent¬ 
ing  to  the  Marxian  doctrine,  which  was  founded  under  peculiar  historical 
exigencies,  and  constructed  without  regard  to  a  social  psychology  admitting 
the  reaction  of  the  socius  upon  presented  copies.  Nevertheless,  the  sociolo¬ 
gist  recognizes  that  so  immediate  and  vital  are  the  economic  interactions 
that  a  control  of  their  workings  for  the  purpose  of  safeguarding  the  welfare 
of  the  community  and  the  imperatives  of  morality  and  justice,  is  an  essential 
and  difficult  achievement.  The  logic  underlying  our  adjustment  of  the 
social  income  is,  of  course,  the  utilitarian  and  hedonistic.  In  its  inception 
it  represented  the  explanation  and  animus  of  the  rising  English  capitalist 
entrepreneur,  and  his  hostility  to  the  “professional”  aristocracy  and  to  a 
control  of  industry  by  the  state.  Its  insistence  upon  private  property  and 

1  Mitchell,  Organized  Labor ,  Preface,  p.  ix. 


42 


LOGICAL  METHOD  IN  SOCIAL  PROBLEMS 


43 


“rights” — once  democratic — has  now  become  the  support,  defended  on 
legal  and  moral  grounds,  of  those  who  manage  the  economic  disposition 
of  things;  and  its  transplanted  ideals  of  privilege  have  taken  on  in  the 
eyes  of  the  workingman,  the  color  of  a  static  “professionalism.”1 

Over  against  the  commander  of  industry  has  appeared  the  vast  group 
of  those  whom  the  machine  industry  has  driven  at  once  to  dependence 
and  to  mutual  union,  in  order  to  equalize  the  conflict.  The  concepts  of 
the  labor  union — collective  bargaining  and  the  standard  of  life — reveal  an 
antithesis  to  the  norms  of  the  employers.  Although  the  unionist  proclama¬ 
tion  of  purpose  may  be  couched  in  the  phraseology  of  the  traditional  self- 
interest,  it  in  fact  assumes  a  different  variety  of  psychology  and  economics. 
Instead  of  starting  with  particular  units  whether  in  the  shape  of  increments 
of  pleasure  or  economic  men,  the  unionist  considers  first  the  total  life, 
interests,  economic  and  social,  of  his  group  in  relation  to  the  life-interest  of 
competing  groups.  The  competing  group  may  be  that  of  the  employer  or 
of  other  workmen.  He  tries  to  consider  himself  as  a  factor  within  an  organic 
changing  society.  The  wages  which  he  receives  cannot  be  looked  upon  as  a 
mathematically  exact  reward  for  individual  services.  There  are  no  indivi¬ 
dual  services  in  modern  society.  His  wages  become,  therefore,  a  recognition 
of  the  value  to  society  of  the  work  which  must  be  done  collectively.  His 
work  is  imbedded  in  a  complex  social  process,  and  to  make  society  recog¬ 
nize  the  ethical  and  social  nature  of  co-operative  endeavor  is  as  much  the 
function  of  the  trade  union  as  to  formulate  mathematical  schedules  of 
prices.2  There  is  bargaining,  but  it  is  collective,  and  conditioned  by  the 
standard  of  life.  The  problem  of  the  union  leader  is  to  insist  upon  the 
co-operative  group  ideal  in  order  to  offset  the  dominantly  hedonistic- 
individualistic,  and  economic  standpoint  of  the  employer.  At  times  the 
leader  calls  a  strike,  reverting  to  military  and  clan  tactics,  but  more  and 
more  if  conflict  is  entered  upon  and  justified,  it  is  under  the  shelter  of 
the  Hegelian  doctrine  of  no  unity  without  negation.  Developments  in  the 
last  decade  warrant  the  conclusion  that  the  first  phase  of  the  theoretical 

1  Veblen,  Theory  of  Business  Enterprise.  ? 

2  The  term  “collective  bargaining”  usually  refers  simply  to  the  fact  that  the  schedule 
of  wages  applies  impartially  to  each  man  in  a  group.  There  is  another  use  which  has 
been  ignored  by  writers  who  denounce  restriction  of  output  and  the  unionist  opposition 
to  piecework.  The  term  may  apply  also  to  a  regard  for  the  interests  of  the  working 
class  as  a  class  within  a  state.  Too  much  work  cannot  be  done  by  the  exceptional  man 
because  it  injures  the  health  of  the  others  who  must  keep  up  with  the  pacemaker. 
Future  generations  of  workers  would  suffer,  and  disease  increase.  From  this  point  of 
view  the  trade  union  is  performing  a  work  which  the  state  will  probably  take  over  in 
the  future.  Cf.  Hoff  ding,  Ethik,  pp.  283  ff. 


44 


DUALISM  OF  FACT  AND  IDEA 


and  practical  reaction  on  the  part  of  the  wage-earners  against  a  military 
industrialism — that  of  self-regarding  impulse  and  violence — is  merging 
into  the  era  of  discussion,  compromise,  and  definite  organization  of  the 
means  of  securing  agreement.  Professor  Commons  describes  the  elaborate 
system  of  representation  and  conference  now  in  successful  operation  between 
longshoremen  and  dock  managers,  and  between  mine  operators  and  laborers. 
He  comments  as  follows: 

Philanthropists  have  long  been  dreaming  of  the  time  when  capital  and  labor 
should  lay  aside  the  strike  and  boycott  and  should  resort  to  arbitration.  By 
arbitration  they  understand  the  submission  of  differences  to  a  disinterested  third 
party.  But  the  philanthropists  have  overlooked  a  point.  Arbitration  is  never 
accepted  until  each  party  to  a  dispute  is  equally  afraid  of  the  other:  and  when  they 
have  reached  that  point,  they  can  adopt  something  better  than  arbitration,  namely, 
negotiation.  This  distinction  was  clearly  brought  out  at  the  notable  conference 
on  arbitration  held  at  Chicago,  in  December,  1900,  under  the  auspices  of  the 
National  Civic  Federation.  All  the  speakers  were  men  of  practical  experience, 
and  they  agreed  that  arbitration  is  impossible  without  organization,  and  that  two 
equally  powerful  organizations  can  negotiate  as  well  as  arbitrate.  This  higher 
form  of  industrial  peace — negotiation — has  now  reached  a  formal  stage  in  a  half- 
dozen  large  industries  in  the  United  States,  which,  owing  to  its  remarkable  like¬ 
ness  to  parliamentary  government  in  the  country  of  its  origin,  England,  may  well 
be  called  constitutional  government  in  industry.1.  .  .  . 

The  most  comforting  feature  of  these  negotiations  is  the  matter-of-fact  way 
in  which  each  side  takes  the  other.  There  is  none  of  that  old-time  hypocrisy  on 
the  part  of  the  employers  that  their  great  interest  in  life  is  to  shower  blessings  upon 
their  hands:  and  there  is  none  of  that  ranting  demagogy  on  the  part  of  the  work¬ 
men  about  the  dignity  of  labor  and  the  iniquity  of  capital.2.  .  .  . 

The  most  important  result  of  these  trade  agreements  is  the  new  feeling  of 
equality  and  mutual  respect  which  springs  up  in  both  employer  and  employee. 
After  all  has  been  said  in  press  and  pulpit,  about  the  “dignity  of  labor,”  the  only 
“dignity”  that  really  commands  respect  is  the  bald  necessity  of  dealing  with 
labor  on  equal  terms.  With  scarcely  an  exception  the  capitalist  officials  who 
make  these  agreements  with  the  labor  officials  of  these  powerful  unions  testify  to 
their  shrewdness,  their  firmness,  their  integrity,  and  their  faithfulness  to  contract. 
Magnificent  generalship  is  shown  in  combining  under  one  leadership  the  mis¬ 
cellaneous  races,  religions,  and  politics  that  compose  the  miners  or  the  dock 
laborers  of  America.  The  labor  movement  of  no  other  country  has  faced  such  a 
problem.3 

This  example  of  mediating  a  conflict  by  means  of  periodic  agreement, 
necessarily  somewhat  mechanical,  presents  encouraging  features.  There 

1  Trade  Unionism  and  Labor  Problems,  p.  1. 

3  Ibid.,  p.  4.  3  Ibid.,  p.  12. 


LOGICAL  METHOD  IN  SOCIAL  PROBLEMS 


45 


is  freedom  from  adamant  compulsion  of  one  party  over  the  other.  The 
norms  of  employer  and  employee  meet  and  are  adjusted  on  the  high  plane 
of  intelligence  and  workability.1 

2.  The  circumstances  demanding  a  “label”  on  goods  to  be  consumed, 
i.  e.,  a  sign  of  a  prescribed  “standard”  observed  in  the  history  of  their 
production,  are,  like  those  creating  the  trade  agreement,  due  to  the  com¬ 
plexities  and  maladjustments  of  our  mechanical  industries.  Specifically, 
the  deplorable  situation  symbolized  by  the  “sweatshop,”  allied  with  the  lack 
of  thought  and  responsibility  on  the  part  of  the  consumers  which  ends  in 
devotion  to  fashion,  bargain  sales,  and  cheapness  without  regard  to  the 
welfare  of  the  original  producer  and  sales  clerk,  are  more  immediate  causes. 

On  the  theoretical  side,  both  the  classical  and  the  socialist  formulation 
of  the  reaction  of  individual  upon  industry  are  now  defective,  because 
the  milieu  in  which  they  arose  has  disappeared.  The  rising  power  of  the 
“proletariat”  sharply  set  off  from  despotic  bourgeois  leaders,  seemed 
to  Marx  and  his  followers  a  cosmic  force  stimulated  by  an  economic  sub¬ 
stratum.  The  employer  was  moved  by  no  sympathetic  motives,  and  the 
workers  were  promised  “a  world  to  gain.”  Production  went  on  auto¬ 
matically:  the  consumer  accepted  according  to  iron  laws,  and  protest  and 
reaction  were  epiphenomena  in  no  wise  affecting  permanently  the  inevitable 
outcome.  It  has  also  become  fairly  clear  that  the  statement  of  the  classical 
political  economy,  even  when  modified  by  the  Austrian  theory  of  marginal 
utility,  is  better  able  to  explain  a  hypothetical  regime  of  economic  harmony 
than  one  of  reconstruction.  Its  logic  is  of  the  fact.  Professor  Clark 
contends  that  in  a  competitive  “state  of  nature”  perfect  adjustment  and 
satisfaction  are  inevitable.  But  the  difficulty  is  that  ours  is  a  dynamic 
society  in  which  economic  desires  are  continually  being  modified  and  con¬ 
ditioned  by  growing  intellectual  and  spiritual  demands.  The  lack  of 
racial  and  historical  perspective,  the  inability  to  explain  an  expanding  valua¬ 
tion  typified  by  the  complex  of  interests  known  as  the  standard  of  life, 
on  the  basis  of  quantitative  calculation  of  “wants”  of  the  pleasurable  kind, 
are  unsatisfactory  qualifications  when  a  definite  criterion  of  choice  and  the 
possibility  of  progress  are  the  questions  asked.  For  reasons  advanced  in 
various  connections,  neither  the  logic  underlying  the  socialist  economics 
nor  the  classical  hedonism  offers  an  adequate  account  of  how  individual 
and  group  valuations  can  modify  the  so-called  impersonal  mechanism 
of  our  industrial  system:  neither  takes  into  consideration  sufficiently 
the  fact  that  our  desires,  our  interests,  are  progressive  and  social  in  their 
inmost  nature. 

1  Small,  General  Sociology,  pp.  35  7  fif. 


46 


DUALISM  OF  FACT  AND  IDEA 


The  label  is  a  device  which,  at  least  partially,  secures  an  organic  contact 
between  manufacturer,  worker,  and  consumer,  each  of  whom,  in  our 
modern  complicated  economic  technique,  is  more  or  less  separated  from 
the  others.  The  trade-union  label  and  the  consumers’-league  label  indicate 
that  after  more  or  less  investigation  the  goods  in  question  are  pronounced 
worthy  of  choice,  not  simply  on  the  ground  of  “ pleasure,”  but  because 
they  are  made  under  sanitary  and  humane  conditions  of  work,  under  com¬ 
pliance  with  law,  and  for  fair  wages.1  The  label  is  a  method  of  dealing 
with  an  objective  situation  by  considering  the  sweat  shop  as  a  problem  to 
be  solved  by  the  long-circuit  way  of  intelligence  and  balancing  of  essential 
factors,  instead  of  the  short-circuit  plan  of  denouncing  the  depravity  of 
those  immediately  involved;  it  shows  that  a  degree  of  control  may  be 
secured  by  adequate  comprehension  of  the  sum  of  conditions  operating 
to  produce  goods  needed  by  society.  More  specifically,  in  so  far  as  the 
label  has  been  successful,  it  has  had  the  following  effects: 

a)  It  has  allowed  the  employer  scope  to  express  his  humane  interest 

in  his  employees.  He  has  been  willing  to  make  his  factory  a  decent  place 
in  which  to  work  and  to  give  his  employees  a  wage  sufficient  to  maintain 
a  good  life.  If  the  conditions  imposed  seem  to  disregard  his  “ freedom” 
and  prerogatives,  it  has  elevated  the  level  of  competition  by  guaranteeing 
a  body  of  customers  who  will  check  the  impulse  to  buy  in  the  cheapest 
market  when  cheapness  conflicts  with  the  common  wealth ;  thus  sanity  and 
an  enlightened  self-interest  may  agree.  * 

b)  For  the  worker  the  benefits  are  obvious.  The  label,  as  employed 
by  the  trade  unionist,  is  a  peaceful  and  effective  instrument  for  attaining 
his  ideals,  a  method  far  superior  to  the  boycott  and  strike  which  necessarily 
involve  misunderstanding,  friction,  and  waste. 

c)  The  consumer  has,  to  a  degree,  remade  the  so-called  impersonal 
economic  machinery:  he  has  paid  a  price  which  will  insure  cleanliness, 
the  carrying-on  of  the  life-process  for  both  manufacturer  and  worker,  and 
has  checked  the  universality  of  mere  cheapness  and  the  assumed  right  of 
the  employer  to  run  his  business  unmolested  by  the  society  which  largely 
presents  him  with  his  tools  and  education.  The  struggle  has  been  shifted 
to  a  higher  plane. 

3.  Most  impressive,  perhaps,  of  all  instruments  for  understanding  and 
interpreting  social  movement  is  the  modern  social  settlement.  Its  general 
characteristic  is  well  known — a  group  of  people  identifying  themselves 
intellectually  and  sympathetically  with  a  community,  and  striving  to  work, 

1  Kelley,  Ethical  Gains  through  Legislation,  chap,  vi;  Mitchell,  Organized  Labor ,  % 

chap,  xxxiii. 


LOGICAL  METHOD  IN  SOCIAL  PROBLEMS 


47 


not  for,  but  with,  the  inhabitants,  for  the  purpose  of  furthering  the  benefi¬ 
cent  forces  implicit  in  social  contact.1  A  satisfactory  account  of  all  the 
ramifications  of  its  mediatory  function  would  carry  us  far  afield;  only  a 
few  features  germane  to  phases  of  the  social  question  previously  touched 
upon  can  be  considered. 

a)  With  reference  to  the  stratification  of  society  into  the  conservative, 
the  favored  by  birth  and  training,  and  the  unenlightened  “  masses,”  the 
social  settlement  has  made  a  distinct  contribution.  It  recognizes  that, 
in  so  far  as  the  holders  of  the  ancient  “idea”  seclude  themselves  from  the 
sweep  of  evolving  needs,  and  fail  to  amalgamate  their  ideals  and  practices 
in  correspondence  thereto,  the  Marxian  indictment  has  weight^'  But 
the  settlement  feels  that  the  more  universal  element  existing  in  professional 
service — the  element  which  carries  one  beyond  “economic  determinism,” 
traditional  obedience  to  family,  and  “class”  virtue — needs  but  a  chance 
to  manifest  itself.  It  is  significant  that  in  England  and  in  America,  the 
settlement  has  struck  root  deepest  where  the  “educated,”  the  college  man 
and  woman,  feel  most  keenly  the  need  for  democratizing  their  acquisitions; 
it  has  aimed  to  be  a  point  of  contact  with  humanitarian  impulses  needing 
concrete  unimpeded  expression;  ministers,  lawyers,  and  teachers  have 
always  been  conspicuous  in  its  activities.  There  is  in  modern  society 
an  over-intellectualization  of  the  few3  and  an  under-liberalization  of  the 
many,  notwithstanding  the  greatness  of  our  “common”  schools. 

There  is  at  present  a  general  disturbance  of  consciousness  and  failure  of 
ideals  among  ourselves,  indicated  by  the  failure  of  many,  indeed  of  most,  to 
command  the  leisure  and  access  of  copies  which  would  develop  their  character¬ 
istic  powers.4 

The  few  suffer  from  overspecialization,  an  accumulation  of  “ideas” 
without  active  outlet,  at  the  same  time  that  the  practical  occupations  of 
the  many  are  unillumined  by  the  glow  of  meaning.5  More  serious  than 
this  is  the  chasm  which  accumulation  of  wealth  by  individualistic  and  anti- 

1  Mead,  University  o}  Chicago  Record,  Vol.  XV,  pp.  108  ff. 

2  James,  Talks  to  Teachers,  p.  297;  Hobhouse,  Morals  in  Evolution,  Vol.  II,  pp. 
282,  283. 

3  Hoff  ding,  Ethik,  pp.  317  ff. 

4  Thomas,  Am.  Jour.  Sociology,  May,  1908,  p.  736.  Lester  Ward  enforces  the 
judgment  that  in  capacity  for  development  there  are  no  marked  differences  answering 
to  present  social  grouping.  {Pure  Sociology,  pp.  447  ff.,  and  pp.  662  ff.,  and  Applied 
Sociology,  passim .) 

s  Jane  Addams,  Philanthropy  and  Social  Progress,  chap,  i;  Hobson,  The  Social 
Problem,  chap.  xiv. 

\ 


48 


DUALISM  OF  FACT  AND  IDEA 


social  methods  has  produced  between  conspicuous,  irresponsible  leisure 
and  deadening  daily  toil.  It  is  the  conviction  of  the  settlement  that  the 
professions  should  be  “socialized”  and  the  occupations  “professionalized.” 

b)  Consequently  the  settlement  has  been  insistent  upon  that  sort  of 
education  which  serves  to  connect  the  intellectual  inheritance  of  the  past 
with  the  needs  of  the  present,  so  that  what  Ruskin  and  Morris  and  Marx 
preached  in  various  ways — the  fundamental  significance  of  labor — may  be 
realized.  Believing  that  the  values  of  life  proceed  from  the  necessities  of 
daily  activity,  it  seeks  to  take  as  its  point  of  departure  the  occupational  skill 
of  the  artisan,  the  dexterities  of  the  immigrant,  in  order  that  imagination, 
interest,  and  meaning  may  transform  barren  work  injo  educative  activity. 

We  apparently  believe  that  the  workingman  has  no  chance  to  realize  life 
through  his  vocation.  We  easily  recognize  the  historic  association  in  regard 
to  ancient  buildings.  We  say  that  “generation  after  generation  have  stamped 
their  mark  upon  them,  have  recorded  their  thoughts  in  them  until  they  have 
become  the  property  of  all.”  And  yet  this  is  even  more  true  of  the  instruments 
of  labor,  which  have  constantly  been  held  in  human  hands.  A  machine  really 
represents  the  “seasoned  life  of  man”  preserved  and  treasured  up  within  itself, 
quite  as  much  as  an  ancient  building  does.  At  present,  workmen  are  brought  in 
contact  with  the  machinery  with  which  they  work  as  abruptly  as  if  the  present 
set  of  industrial  implements  had  been  newly  created.  They  handle  the  machinery 
day  by  day  without  any  notion  of  its  gradual  evolution  and  growth.  Few  of  the 
men  who  perform  the  mechanical  work  in  the  great  factories  have  any  compre¬ 
hension  of  the  fact  that  the  inventions  upon  which  the  factory  depends,  the  instru¬ 
ments  which  they  use,  have  been  slowly  worked  out,  each  generation  using  the 
gifts  of  the  last  and  transmitting  the  inheritance  until  it  has  become  a  social 
possession.  This  can  only  be  understood  by  a  man  who  has  obtained  some  idea  of 
social  progress.  We  are  still  childishly  pleased  when  we  see  the  further  sub¬ 
division  of  labor  going  on,  because  the  quantity  of  the  output  is  increased  thereby, 
and  we  apparently  are  unable  to  take  our  attention  away  from  the  product  long 
enough  to  really  focus  it  upon  the  producer.  Theoretically,  “the  division  of 
labor”  makes  men  more  interdependent  and  human  by  drawing  them  into  a 
unity  of  purpose.  “If  a  number  of  people  decide  to  build  a  road,  and  one  digs 
and  one  brings  stones  and  another  breaks  them,  they  are  quite  inevitably  united 
by  their  interest  in  the  road.  But  this  naturally  presupposes  that  they  know 
where  the  road  is  going  to,  that  they  have  some  curiosity  and  interest  about  it,  and 
perhaps  a  chance  to  travel  upon  it.”1 

c)  The  social  settlement  has  probably  served  to  interpret  democracy  more 
than  has  any  other  institution.  The  common  conception  is  that  America 

1  Addams,  Democracy  and  Social  Ethics,  pp.  209-11.  Cf.  Ward,  Dynamic 
Sociology,  Vol.  II,  p.  538. 


LOGICAL  METHOD  IN  SOCIAL  PROBLEMS 


49 


has  a  closely  woven  pattern  of  government  and  that  all  the  energy  needed 
*  is  to  induce  immigrants  to  come  to  our  shores,  accept  the  constitution, 

and  adopt  our  ideals  ready  made.  Miss  Addams  shows  the  futility  of  this 
rendering,  and  describes  the  readjustments  in  theory  and  practice  which 
the  needs  of  municipalities,  especially  the  presence  of  foreign  peoples  in 
our  cities,  force  upon  our  traditional  interpretation.  According  to  her 
argument,  the  blight  of  militarism  and  group  prejudice  has  unsettled 
social  practice  and  judgment  even  to  the  degree  of  condoning  child  labor 
because  of  the  assumed  necessity  to  protect  business  interests  and  an 
attendant  necessity  of  a  fixed  status  for  “working  people;”  and,  in  its 
exclusiveness,  America  fails  to  incorporate  the  gifts  of  the  immigrant — 
his  skill,  his  art,  his  loyalty.  But  by  means  of  a  kindly  back-working, 
because  of  the  hard  necessities  of  intergroup  give-and-take,  of  unemploy¬ 
ment  and  simple  charity,  Miss  Addams  thinks,  there  is  developing  a  cos¬ 
mopolitanism,  a  socializing  of  impulse,  which  will  more  and  more  trans¬ 
mute  the  old  military  virtues  of  daring,  self-sacrifice,  and  emulation  into 
positive  social  virtues  expressing  themselves  in  the  pride  of  workmanship 
and  struggle  against  evil.  The  war  for  land  and  “preservation  of  honor” 
will  be  succeeded  by  the  war  for  sanitary  tenements,  sane  politics,  and 
abolition  of  disease.  The  democracy  based  upon  a  revolt  from  despotism 
and  eighteenth-century  concepts  will  be  reinterpreted  and  beautified  by  the 
reaction  of  new  facts  upon  old  ideals.  The  state  will  lose  its  negative 
and  military  character,  and  become  positive  and  co-operative  because 
embodying  the  genuine  desires  and  not  the  fears  of  the  citizens  constituting  it. 

d)  By  reason  of  intimate  knowledge  of  civic  relationships,  because  of 
sympathy  with  its  neighborhood,  the  social  settlement  is  admirably  fitted 
to  allow  conflicting  impulses  and  interests  to  secure  equilibrium  in  times 
of  crisis.  The  efficiency  of  its  technique  revealed  itself  on  the  occasion  of 
a  supposed  attempt  to  assassinate  the  chief  of  police  of  one  of  our  large 
American  cities.  The  newspapers,  backed  by  the  sentiment  of  the  con¬ 
stituency  whom  they  served,  blazoned  forth  the  “facts.”  A  Russian  Jew — 
an  “anarchist” — gained  entrance  to  the  house  of  the  chief  with  brutal 
intent.  The  officer  in  self-defense  shot  the  malefactor.  The  community 
was  urged  to  arise  and  stamp  out  lawlessness  and  anarchism.  The  police 
should  prohibit  all  meetings  and  repress  and  arrest;  there  were  the  plain 
4  “facts”  and  there  was  the  written  “law.”  The  police,  backed  by  the 

newspapers,  announced  that  there  would  be  no  investigation:  it  was  a 
clear  case.  The  socialists  insisted  that  it  was  the  old  trick  of  the  author- 
•>.  ities  to  uphold  “capitalism”  and  property.  The  Russian  Jewish  popula¬ 

tion  was  thrown  into  consternation  and  bitterness  because  of  the  Russian 


So 


DUALISM  OF  FACT  AND  IDEA 


methods  of  the  police  and  the  stigma  which  race  hatred  attached  to  a  whole 
group  because  of  the  offense  of  one  of  its  members. 

It  is  not  necessary  to  follow  out  the  story;  the  pertinent  point  is  that  the 
social  settlement  was  the  only  sane  instrument  in  the  whole  city  to  fiffd  out 
the  meaning  of  the  crisis  and  reveal  it  to  the  immigrant  and  the  whole 
community.  In  the  process  of  effecting  its  purpose  it  was  compelled  to 
incur  the  criticism  of  press,  socialist,  Jewish  population,  and  the  public 
in  general,  and  its  degree  of  success  or  failure  was  measured  by  the  ease 
with  which  it  could  control  the  conditions.1  But,  instead  of  violent  impulse 
and  brutal  force,  it  attempted  to  employ  the  constructive  reaction  of  investi¬ 
gation  and  intelligence. 

The  distinguishing  trait,  therefore,  of  the  social  settlement  is  that  it  is 
a  mediatory  device,  that  it  has  no  predetermined  formulas  to  work  by, 
that  it  is  a  creator  of  values.  It  does  not  represent  simply  the  interests 
of  the  conservative,  the  business  men,  and  the  cultured;  neither  does  it 
defend  without  regard  to  social  stability,  the  demands  of  “the  poor  lower 
classes.”  Because,  ideally,  it  represents  no  vested  interests,  no  exclusively 
“bourgeois”  or  “proletarian”  virtues,  it  occupies  a  strategic  point  in 
interpreting  new  experience  in  the  light  of  old,  and  old  valuations  in  the 
light  of  the  changing.  Its  resident  “workers”  are  in  a  peculiar  measure 
implicated  in  the  reorganization  which  they  effect  in  the  community; 
there  is  nothing  of  the  aloofness  of  lawgiver  and  administrator;  its  aim 
is  that  of  applying  intelligence  to  the  control  of  social  interaction.  Its 
achievements  reveal  the  flexibility  and  constructiveness  of  the  instrumental 
method,  the  nature  of  which  in  relation  to  social  problems  it  has  been  the 
endeavor  of  this  thesis  to  state. 

1  Jane  Addams,  Charities  and  the  Commons,  May,  2,  1908,  pp.  105  ff. 


VII.  LOGICAL  METHOD  AND  DEMOCRACY 


A  review  of  the  general  tenor  of  the  discussion  may  appropriately  be 
put  in  terms  of  a  conception  of  democracy.  During  the  past  century  the 
static,  romantic,  and  individualistic  view  of  democracy  inherited  from 
radical  English  and  French  thinkers  has  been  reconstructed  to  square 
with  the  rich  development  of  historical  and  evolutionary  science.  It  has 
been  seen  that  controlled  change  is  the  only  criterion  of  stability,  that  life 
is  an  endless  process  of  becoming  in  which  structure  and  function,  the 
group  and  the  individual,  habit  and  attention,  are  necessary  interacting 
and  mutually  conditioning  elements.  Whether  society  is  conceived  as  an 
“organism”  or  as  an  “organization,”  it  remains  certain  that  no  association 
can  be  entirely  rational  and  worthy  in  which  the  contributions  of  all  its 
constituents  are  not  recognized  as  factors  in  the  solution  of  its  problem. 
That  the  past  generation  has  seen  the  rise  of  a  social  psychology  drawing 
its  material  from  the  evolution  of  the  animal  series,  of  the  child,  and  of  the 
race,  coincidently  with  a  wholesome  enthusiasm  for  a  constructive  sociology, 
is  not  of  merely  speculative  interest:  it  is  one  manifestation  of  the  dawn 
of  intense  awareness  of  the  meaning  of  social  evolution.  It  is  democracy 
come  to  know  itself.  There  can  persist  no  dogma,  no  institution,  no 
privileged  group  exempted  from  the  searchlighLof  sane  investigation  and 
possibility  of  transformation.  A  periodic  taking  of  stock,  an  intellectual 
pessimism,  a  disbelief  in  the  absolute  and  enduring  office  of  the  established 
custom  and  authority,  is  the  only  guarantee  of  social  order  which  the  theory 
of  a  constructive  democracy  can  tolerate.  No  panacea  can  obviate  the 
need  of  specific  treatment,  and  all  the  apparently  remote  and  academic 
discoveries  of  specialized  science  and  theoretical  speculation  find  their 
excuse  for  being  in  a  turning-back  and  application  to  that  social  medium 
in  which  they  arise.  A  society  which  has  become  self-conscious  cannot 
leave  out  of  account  anything  which  the  honest  conviction  of  its  members 
has  contributed,  for  it  is  the  constant  assertion  of  the  worth  of  unique  experi¬ 
ence  which  secures  that  co-ordination  through  progressive  reconstruction, 
which  distinguishes  a  dynamic  civilization. 

Again  from  this  angle  follows  the  contention  that  a  problem  of  what¬ 
ever  kind  cannot  be  solved  unless  within  the  point  of  crisis  there  be  allowed 
the  free  play  of  investigation,  reconstruction,  and  control.  A  conclusion  of 
this  kind  will  satisfy  neither  the  extremist  nor  a  society  whose  keepers  of 

5i 


52 


DUALISM  OF  FACT  AND  IDEA 


order  have  as  yet  not  realized  the  implications  of  a  tolerant,  positive  view 
of  democracy.  The  state  has  recognized  the  duty  of  educating  the  young, 
secluding  the  unsocial,  and  caring  for  the  weak  and  unfortunate.  But  it 
has  not  embodied  in  its  working  theory  and  technique  the  meas'ure  of 
truth  and  justice  which  exists  in  the  world-views  proffered  by  the  many 
varieties  of  radicalism.  The  present  analysis  of  the  assumptions  of  typical 
social  protests  does  not  warrant  the  conclusion  that  society  is  rushing 
toward  any  predetermined  goal;  it  does  confirm  the  opinion  of  many  writers 
that  the  state  is  losing  a  notable  opportunity  if  it  fails  to  adjust  itself  to 
undercurrents  which  have  become  international.  The  fervor  and  practical 
energy  which  is  now  concentrated  and  driven  against  social  stability  could 
become  a  mighty  upbuilding  force  if  directed  by  a  state  willing  to  give 
more  intelligent  heed  to  the  elements  of  truth  which  exist  in  the  midst 
of  the  vagaries  of  radicalism. 

Certainly  it  is  not  true  that  the  state  has  been  entirely  blind  to  the 
demands  of  popular  protest;  the  remarkable  contemporaneous  record  of 
improvement  in  Australia,  Germany,  Belgium,  England,  and  the  United 
States  testifies  to  a  transformation  of  the  theory  and  practice  of  democracy 
which  the  future  historian  will  see  in  clearer  perspective  than  is  possible 
for  us.  It  may  reasonably  be  hoped  that  the  widespread  interest  in  the 
as  yet  inchoate  study  of  sociology  and  its  application  in  social  technology 
may  be  symbolic  of  the  conviction  that  if  human  experience  is  to  grow 
richer  and  more  meaningful,  it  must  be  by  virtue  of  purposive  thinking 
applied  to  the  uses  of  living. 

The  distinctive  features  of  the  constructive  method  of  experimental 
logic  are  consonant  with  the  evolutionary  view  of  democracy  to  which  the 
Anglo-Saxon  world  is  committed.  To  state  the  logic  of  democracy  necessi¬ 
tates  an  analysis  of  the  process  of  solving  a  definite  problem.  The  main 
characteristics  already  formulated  are  the  concrete  universality  of  judg¬ 
ment,  the  immediate  value  of  purposive  thought  for  the  control  of  recurring 
crises,  the  rejection  of  a  non-functional  Absolute  whether  of  fact  or  idea, 
and  the  fundamentally  social  nature  of  impulse  and  endeavor.  Democracy, 
then,  as  a  logical  method,  signifies  the  continued  use  of  a  constructive 
hypothetical  procedure  in  the  solution  of  social  problems.  A  progressive 
democracy  is  based  upon  the  conviction  that  the  constant  factor  persisting 
in  the  midst  of  change  is  not  immutable  entities  of  any  kind,  but  a  function — 
a  furthering  of  the  life-process  by  ceaseless  interpretation  and  redirection. 


J 

1 


c.v 


